Re: API versioning in SAX

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 03 Aug 1998 23:11:52

At 19:01 03/08/98 +0100, Michael Kay wrote:
>If I'm the administrator of my server or my workstation, and
>I see a new SAX driver out there, wouldn't I just read the
>README ...
>
>That's surely the whole point. The guy who writes the
>application and the guy who chooses the parser are not the
>same person, so the former wants to check at run-time that
>the latter hasn't screwed him up.

The current JUMBO2 has an option to load any SAX-based parser from a menu
button, so you can experiment in a fairly interactive manner. At this stage
of the game I'd suggest that application writers try more than one parser
to make sure that consistent results are being generated from SAX. And if
different parsers give different results it might be worth reporting those
here in case the authors were unaware. In any case a systematic comparison
of any such differences between parsers would be a public service :-)

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg