[XML-SIG] Re: python SAX API

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lars Marius Garshol
| 
| It's the wrong time to change the API, but there must be other
| things we can do.

* Alexandre Fayolle
| 
| Making a decision on the list is basically useless, unless it can be
| accessed outside the mailing list archives. 

Exactly. It's useless if we make the decision and then stop there. We
need to decide on specific tasks to be done, and then do them. 

Here are the things I think we need to do:

 a) agree on anything that is currently vague or uncertain in the SAX
    APIs, list all the gray areas where drivers and applications take
    wrong turns today (and this should include Java->Python surprises),

 b) go through the existing library documentation and make sure that
    it says what we think it should on all these points,

 c) go through the existing drivers and make sure that they behave
    correctly (automated testing is the way to go on this, methinks),

 d) write the Python SAX for Java SAX developers document, and put it
    somewhere prominent (where?), and

 e) write a short summary of important points for SAX driver
    developers, so that they know what not to do. This should refer to
    the automated driver tool test.

I volunteer for tasks b-e, but I need help on a. Comments, other
ideas?

What is especially needed is for the people who have problems to list
their problems (this is part of task a) so that we can address them.
So, anyone who is not pleased, step forward, and tell us what it is
you're not happy about. If we can't fix it we can at least document it
properly. 

| I understand that Python 2.2 is being freezed. What's the status of
| expat and of the documentation in 2.2. IMHO, there's an emergency
| here.

It would certainly be far better to get all this stuff into 2.2 than
to have it arrive after the train has left. The state of 2.2, as I
currently understand it is that they have just branched off for 2.2b2,
and that there's a feature freeze. How strict that freeze is, and how
they would view bug-fixing and documentation-fixing from us I don't
know. 

The release schedule is here:
  <URL: http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0251.html >
                                       
| When is 0.7 due? If we are still far from the objectives, maybe
| making a 0.6.7 release with coherent parsers would be a good idea.

An 0.6.7 with our fixes sounds like a very good idea.

--Lars M.