Re: [xml] Still trying to handle entities using the SAX interface

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 10:53:20AM +0200, Peter Jacobi wrote:
> I don't think it would be wise to handle the SAX API as minor and less 
> important. I'm using libxml for all sort of XML handling, sometimes DOM 
> is the better fit and sometimes and wouldn't work at all (file size). And I 
> wouldn't like to use two different libs for SAX and DOM.

  Sure, I understand, but entities handling gets really tricky due to
the fact that there is a lot of different way to process them. The problem
is not to get one way to work easilly but to get everything working:
    - with a user defined SAX or the DOM building one
    - with or without entity substitution
    - with or without validation
    - with push or with pull modes
and without forgetting that different entities type need different processing
and that this processing can be different if the entity reference is 
found in the internal subset, the external subset, element content or
attributes.
  Hence the complexity of the overall entity handling is extremely high,
and a minor change in one place can make the whole thing be non-conformant
from another angle. That explains why I'm so reluctant to change it in
general ... I think I have gone over entity handling redesign half a
dozen time and each time was more painful than the previous one :-\

> Daniel, I don't want to put more work on your shoulders, I pretty much 
> understand that I have to do something myself.

  Well just keeping with the standard bug reports, getting XSLT to 1.0
and trying to fix the validation code is already a nearly full-time job.
Getting more people to understand this core part of libxml is probably
in everybody's interest, I can get hit by a bus today ! So I welcome
people effort in this area, but one must also understand that I will
need to build a lot of trust in patches submitted to entities handling
before I actually commit them.

Daniel

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