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raw names vs qualified names

• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• To: xml-dev <xml-dev@x...>
• Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 10:38:59 -0800

I have another, hopefully less controversial suggestion about renaming
something in the SAX2 API. In the ContentHandler class the
starteElement() method is declared like this:

public void startElement(java.lang.String namespaceURI,
                         java.lang.String localName,
                         java.lang.String rawName,
                         Attributes atts)
                  throws SAXException

I suggest the third argument, rawName, be renamed qualifiedName. The
reason is that "qualified name" is the term actually used in the
Namespaces in XML specification for prefixed names like rdf:book. The
term "raw name" does not appear.

Since method arguments are purely formal, this change can be made
without affecting anybody's existing code or invalidating anybody's
books. (Indeed in my books I routinely rename method arguments if I
think it makes the declarations clearer.)

The same change should be made in the endElement() method as well. It's
aminor change but I think it would help people learn SAX2 a little more
quickly and help ensure consistency between different XML specs.

-- 
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ 
|               Java I/O (O'Reilly & Associates, 1999)               |
|            http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/books/javaio/            |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1565924851/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/ | 
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/     |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

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