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Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again

• To: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <elharo@m...>
• Subject: Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• From: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
• Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:40:21 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>, <sax-devel@l...>
• References: <001101c3fd64$eab0ad30$9e539696@citkwaclaww2k> <p06010201bc6556929ee4@[192.168.254.4]>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <elharo@m...>
To: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
Cc: <xml-dev@l...>; <sax-devel@l...>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 3:27 PM

> ><quote>
> >The application must assume that the document is unusable after the parser
> >has invoked this method, and should continue (if at all) only for the sake
> >of collecting additional error messages: in fact, SAX parsers are free to
> >stop reporting any other events once this method has been invoked.
> ></quote>
> 
> Yuck. That is nasty. This is why specs need a normative test suite. 
> However, I think the text under endDocument() is more important:
> 
> The SAX parser will invoke this method only once, and it will be the 
> last method invoked during the parse. The parser shall not invoke 
> this method until it has either abandoned parsing (because of an 
> unrecoverable error) or reached the end of input.
> 
> Clearly it's OK to call endDocument after a fatalError. Is it 
> required? I think so, but it's arguable. David Brownell claims it's 
> required 
> <http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=8561128&list=13179> 
> and it's certainly useful to be able to depend on this.

I admit I am not a native speaker, but IMO the wording above
would not contradict the behaviour of an exception stopping
the parser cold. Exceptions are normally thought of as
the "exceptional" case, and documenting the behaviour of an 
implementation does usually not imply that it will behave
the same when an exception is thrown. 

I would think calling endDocument() always, as long as no exception
is thrown, is a reasonable behaviour from a programmer's point of view.
 
Karl

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    • From: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
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