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Re: SAX for Binary Encodings (SAD-SAX)

• Subject: Re: SAX for Binary Encodings (SAD-SAX)
• From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>
• Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 19:04:31 +0000
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <200311091636.AIC32666@m...>
• References: <200311091636.AIC32666@m...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

Bob Wyman wrote:
>     How is writing a SAX interface to ASN.1 defined binary 
> encodings any different from writing a SAX interface to CSV 
> files? Or, to GEDCOM (the genealogy data format)? I've seen 
> both of these as examples in books written by respected XML 
> authorities. Neither of these formats is "XML", yet, those 
> authors are not condemned for showing or teaching people how 
> to use SAX on non-XML data... The ability to strap non-XML 
> data into SAX is, in books that teach people how to use SAX, 
> often presented as a great *strength* of the interface.

Neither of them need SAX to be optimized on their behalf. Your 
proposal does.

What makes you think you're the only one who needs a flag?


>      As others have pointed out. SAX2, as it stands today, 
> is a perfectly good interface for working with ASN.1 defined 
> encodings. It *needs* no changes. This isn't just my 
> personal opinion, it is backed up by statements in this list 
> from someone working for a vendor that is building a SAX2 
> interface for ASN.1 defined encodings. My proposal only 
> suggested an optional *extension* to SAX (using the normal 
> SAX extension mechanisms) that would make working with SAX 
> just a little more comfortable for someone who is used to 
> working with typed data. I fail to see the harm in that.

I fail to see the harm in someone who needs that convenience 
layering in on top of SAX, perhaps as a filter, and publishing 
*that* for everyone else's use. Unicode wonks are happy, people who 
need data typing and binary SAX streams are happy.


>      On "binary XML". If you read my earlier postings in the 
> list, you will see that I have consistently argued that 
> there should be NO "binary XML." We already have widely used 
> and effective binary encoding standards that are used to 
> enable everything from the cell phone system to our network 
> management services (SNMP) to our directory services (LDAP), 
> etc. We don't need a "new" binary encoding standard even 
> though there are a number of folk in the XML community who 
> seem to want to create one. Leave XML to textual-encodings. 
> ASN.1 has already dealt with the binary problem. 

But you need to change a key XML technology to make it work for 
non-XML technology? This is where I get lost and I end up saying 
your position is dissonanant.

SAX is XML parsing API. If you feel you need to use that XML parsing 
API for non-XML, then tune your encoding to do so without impinging 
on the API.


Bill de hÓra
-- 
Technical Architect
Propylon
http://www.propylon.com

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    • From: Bob Wyman <bob@w...>

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