[XML-SIG] Signature of startElement

[Paul]

On 19 Sep 2000, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

> 
> ...
> 
> I have changed most of what needs to change in the API on my laptop
> already. I only need to test the changes and fix any problems that
> show up. I can do this this week, but would like to feel that I have
> the SIG (and the Python developers) behind me before I do so.

Personally, I am totally behind any changes to make things work and
against changes that add features (unless very minor and very
simple). I think we should play by the rules of the Python feature
freeze. There are some extra things you would like in SAX and some extra
things I would like in DOM, et. al., but alot of it can wait for Python
2.1.

As far as I know these are the bugs with what we have:

 * references to _source are inconsistent
 * startElement method signatures are wrong in dummy base class
 * startElement method signatures (in general) do not agree with what you
decided after our method signatures thread
 * Expat namespaces are not passed through properly

I don't think that fixing any of these requires systemic changes.

> startElement(name, attrs): 
>   name is a string, attrs an Attributes instance
> 
> startElementNS(name, qname, attrs):
>   name is a (uri, localname) tuple, qname the qualified XML 1.0 name,
>   and attrs an Attributes instance
> 
> endElement(name):
>   name is a string
> 
> endElementNS(name, qname):
>   name is a (uri, localname) tuple, while qname is the qualified XML
>   1.0 name

Okay, great. Make it so!

> The Attributes interface also has to have some minor changes to fix
> some performance problems Paul discovered incurred by generic
> applications like DOM tree builders.

If this is going to change the documented API then you should do it now.
If it is just an implementation issue I would say you should leave it and
do it later.

 Paul Prescod