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Re: XML API specification

• From: Len Bullard <cbullard@h...>
• To: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 11:05:24 -0600

Tim Bray wrote:
> 
> At 10:59 AM 26/02/97 -0500, Gavin Nicol wrote:
> >Quite. I think we can model these objects in a number of ways
> >though. I would personally like to define the objects in IDL
> >*and* SGML... (for information on IDL etc. look at www.omg.org).
> 
> Fortunately, we're not starting from scratch.  We have two strawman
> interfaces on the table right now, NXP and Lark.  Seems to me that
> since XML is particularly likely to be processed in the client, you
> could do a lot worse than a Java API - the idea of having a
> set of superclasses for Element, Attribute, and so on seems awfully
> desirable to me.  

Milowski proposed this approach two years ago on comp-text-sgml and in 
private email for the same reasons.  I think it is a very desirable 
spec to have.  

Could we go through the bone of contention up front 
and just settle it:  are grove and grove plan definitions of 
use to an object-oriented API design?  Really just asking here, 
so this gets settled and doesn't crop up again and again.

> [Confession - I've been too busy putting proper
> attribute defaulting in Lark (hard!) to even get around to looking at
> the NXP interface, so I have no comment as to which straw I prefer at
> the moment].
> 
> I would propose seriously that Java be the basis of the first
> cut at an API spec; it is really very pleasingly clean,
> and also has the virtue that ideas can be tested more or less
> instantly because there's running parser code to graft them
> onto. - Tim

Wouldn't that also avoid the platform wars issues by settling 
on a virtual machine?  Given that most operating systems are 
supporting it or will be soon, that it is fast becoming the 
choice of other web languages for "heavy lifter" scripting, 
I agree it looks ideal.

Java is rather slow, but perhaps that is implementation and 
not an issue for an API spec.  Correct me if that is wrong.

len

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