Eric Schwarzenbach said: > Omitting all the Writer-based methods to encourage Stream usage wouldn't > have been a bad idea either (like DocumentBuilder and SAXParser for the > same problem on the other end). But it's a bit late now I suppose.
I would say these methods should be deprecated and removed in a future release. If I had seen the Writer methods were deprecated, I would never have used them in the first place. > Over the years, I've seen probably every programmer new to XML fall into > the same pitfall when they try do this. "Well this is text, it makes the > most sense to use the Writer version...", they inevitably think, and it > often takes a lot of explaining to convince them otherwise. I shudder to > imagine how many wrong implementations there are out there because it > works most of the time. I'm not new to XML, but certainly new to the subtleties of unicode. The Principle of Least Astonishment should apply to this. There is no obvious reason why a Writer should not be a rational choice for XML, especially considering that a Writer is an officially supported by the implementation. If it's not a rational choice (as has been pointed out), then don't support it. People have argued "it's documented", but then what programmer looks for documentation before the fact to to solve a bug they don't even know is there? Regards, Graham -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
