Hi, On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 12:46 +0000, Chris Burdess wrote: > Mark Wielaard wrote: > >> Arguably, if we change the name we lose any benefit of being able to > >> plug in a 3rd party datatype library implementation. It would be > >> trivial to duplicate just the part of the API we need in a private > >> namespace and use that for our own providers, but we would only be > >> able to use our own implementation. > >> > >> My primary reason for including this API is that it is the current > >> standard API. I believe that much as with JAXP itself, free software > >> benefits by being able to interface with alternate implementations, > >> to provide more choice and facilitate testing. > > > > OK. Which other free datatype library implementations are there? > > James Clark's Jing (http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/jing.html, > BSD licence)
It would indeed be nice to support that seamlessly. It seems it might
even be a starting point for a XML Schema validator. Although it doesn't
seem Jing is developed much lately.
Normally I would just say No to adding public packages that are not part
of other core library implementations. Just because that makes
compatibility a harder story for our users. But in this case I think we
could because:
1) This interface is really small and stable.
- Users are unlikely to be using different versions from what we
provide.
2) It seems this provides us a smooth path to get more/better
implementations that we do need for the core library
(xml.validation in this case).
But you should clearly document how this plugs into each other. If the
only people providing new validation support through the datatype
library is us then we can as well just use a private/renamed copy of the
package. And I would like for others to have a little more time to
comment on the proposal since it is kind of a precedent for including
such things (but the above 2 rules seems to prevent an explosion of
similar things).
So, does anybody else have any comments? Otherwise I think Chris should
go ahead with this (provided the interaction between xml.validation and
relaxng.datatype will be clearly documented).
Cheers,
Mark
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
