Maybe I'm incorrect here, but I'll take my shot at it and someone can
correct me if I'm wrong and I'll have learned something...
There's no such thing as a 'reference quality' release on Apache as such.
The code on Apache is free and provided as is. Individual companies, and
IBM is one of them, can take that code and package it, test it, add value
to it, then release it as a reference quality release and support it as
such.
So, though its no legal guarantee, you can probably assume that any Xerces
code level that IBM and others base their reference releases on is a stable
code level of good quality. But, I don't think anyone actually backs that
claim since the code as it sits on Apache is provided 'as is' with no
guarantees. Occasionally, binary builds may be provided on Apache of the
Xerces code, but those are more conveniences than anything else.
We probably should update the docs, since I'm sure some of those initial
statements, posted back during the initial donation of the source code to
Apache, are probably somewhat out of date. I assume that those statements
had to do with the fact that the documentation wasn't in standard Apache
form, we had to take out some stuff that isn't part of the Xerces code
base, and so on. But, there may be other reasons for that statement that
I'm not aware of, that touch on the other parts such as Xalan.
----------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Software Weenie
IBM Center for Java Technology - Silicon Valley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Alex Rosen) on 02/17/2000 10:57:04 AM
Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc:
Subject: Version number confusion
I'm brand-new to Xerces, and I'm a bit confused about the current version.
http://xml.apache.org says: "The Xerces implementations are currently in
beta form. We are working on merging contributions from the initial
contributors into a unified code base. We expect to have a usable release
of
Xerces by the end of 1999." Obviously this is out of date, WRT the
reference
to 1999. But I can't tell if that date slipped and it's still in "beta", or
if it was met successfully and it's now of "release quality". It seems to
be
version 1.0.1, which would indicate that it is past beta quality and is at
release quality. But this statement appears in the Readme file in the
Xerces-J download: "Note that because some of the standards, notably XML
Schema, are still not complete, the stable API will definitely be different
from its current form in Xerces 1.0.1." I can't tell if this means that
some
parts of Xerces are release quality and some aren't, or if the whole thing
is still considered beta.
Any clarification would be appreciated.
Alex
