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[SAX2] DeclHandler vs. DTDHandler

• From: Michael Fuller <msf@i...>
• To: David Megginson <david@m...>
• Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 18:37:52 +1100

DeclHandler is an SAX2 extension with the purpose of providing
notification of DTD declaration events, that supplies the methods:

      attributeDecl(eName, aName, type, valueDefault, value) 
	    Report an attribute type declaration.

      elementDecl(name, model) 
	    Report an element type declaration.

      externalEntityDecl(name, publicId, systemId) 
	    Report a parsed external entity declaration.

      internalEntityDecl(name, value)
	    Report an internal entity decla

DTDHandler was part of SAX 1.0, with the purpose of providing
notification of basic DTD-related events, that supplies the methods:

      notationDecl(name, publicId, systemId) 
	    Receive notification of a notation declaration event.

      unparsedEntityDecl(name, publicId, systemId, notationName) 
	    Receive notification of an unparsed entity declaration event.

To my (naive) eye, they seem to be handling very similar sorts of events;
if so it's certainly untidy ;-) and somewhat confusing to have such
similar tasks split across two distinct classes.

Now, backwards-compatibility with SAX 1.0 suggest that leaving DTDHandler
"as is" is a Good Thing, but would the newer SAX2 class DeclHandler be better
defined as an extension to DTDHandler, avoiding the need to inherit from
both interfaces?

Or, alternatively, deprecate DTDHandler in favour of DeclHandler, and
have DeclHandler take over responsibility for handling all such events?

Michael, who perhaps should have paid more attention during SAX2 alpha.

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