[XML-SIG] gray areas in Python SAX API

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Alexandre Fayolle
|
| OK, here's my take on the list:

Excellent! I took this and wrote it up as an HTML document, and put it
at <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no/tmp/saxfix.html > so that we have
a stable reference to work against.
 
| namespace-prefix feature is not supported by parsers
|  * decide if supporting setting this feature is mandatory or not
|  * if yes, fix parsers

Hmmmm. I have no strong opinion on this, but unless I am mistaken it
is impossible to implement this in PyExpat, and that suggests to me
that we should leave it optional. Does anyone have good reasons why it
should be mandatory?
 
| way of reporting no-namespace (None or '')
|  * decide which one to use. Already done, I think, but I cannot remember
| what the decision was

The decision was None. Anything else just seemed non-Pythonic and
strange. '' was chosen in Java SAX to lessen the pain of comparisons.
(You'd need a four-element if-clause with null, but could do with two
elements with ''.)

|  * PyExpat uses '', xmlproc uses None. Using None has a strong
| impact on code using DOM.

Someone mentioned this before, some months after we made the decision,
but I don't remember what the problem was. Can someone explain?

| That's all for now, but other stuff may come up during the weekend break. 

Yeah, anyone, please post more contributions to this list.

--Lars M.