Two minor notes about the recent Xerces-J release: -> Astute code watchers will note that the relatively new xmlParserAPIs.jar that Xerces includes DOM and SAX interfaces plus only the javax.xml.parsers package of the JAXP interfaces. There are a number of minor differences between the xml-commons copies of this code (which is used in both xml-commons and xml-xalan's xml-apis.jar; also presumably used in Sun's JAXP reference implementations although I haven't proven that) and the Xerces0J 2.0.0beta4 copies:
-- There are two minor code changes to the JAXP parser factory interfaces: the Xerces copies of these explicitly list the Xerces impl classes as the fallback implementation class names, instead of using null, which the xml-commons copies do. -- There are several different DOM packages included in the Xerces copies versus xml-commons ones; like xml-commons not having the html subpackage. There are also a number of javadoc changes in the org.w3c.dom package itself, although no apparent code changes. -- The SAX classes also have minor differences. Xerces has a new class, sax.helpers.NewInstance, which is basically a copy of some worker methods from the JAXP FactoryFinders. Javadoc is different, since the xml-commons versions all specify '@version 2.0r2pre' and the Xerces ones are '@version 2.0' The xml-commons' version of SAX*Exception classes has an additional no-arg constructor, interestingly enough. The xml-commons version of AttributesImpl has two minor fixes to setAttributes() and ensureCapacity() that I think were noted here: http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4129 in the sax.helpers package, each of the *Adapter classes has several code changes as well. -> Instead of having two complete separate sets of distributions, why not just have one distribution that has the new directory layout, and temporarily has a spare /xerces-old-bin/ directory that has the old-style packaged .jar files? I like the fact that you're providing both sets of jar packaging for user conveneince (sorry, Xalan didn't bother) but it'd be a lot nicer to have just one set of distros instead of separate distros (IMO). Oh: while I'm here - make it 4 notes: - Love the little fix/add graphics in bin distro docs/releases.html! - The .jar packaging change thing: why not just have xerces.jar and xmlParserAPIs.jar? Sure, it's a little more correct to call it an '...Impl.jar', but this makes users make two classpath changes instead of just one. Personal preference, I suppose: more precise naming or keeping more backwards compatibility. - Shane
