Howdy Andy,

A couple of hopefully short points:

>>I'm not sure I like this name; I think "parser" implies to the XML world
an
>>object that you use to gain access to the contents of something, as
opposed
>>to an object that transforms things from XML representations into

> Yes, but it's "parsing" the grammar's native format from a
> stream. That's why I chose that name.

But it's also compiling it in a very literal sense.

>>until we get around to defining--or implementing--API's to let people get
>>access to grammar contents the name's a real misnomer.  How about
>>XMLGrammarCompiler?

>And then what? Once we define (or implement) an API to access
>the grammar contents, are we gonna change the name back to
>XMLGrammarParser?

That isn't what I had in mind.  That's mainly because--at the risk of
opening the grammar access Pandora's box :-)--I don't envision any more
methods living on this interface, whatever it's called.  The grammar access
methods should live on the Grammar interface where they're general enough,
and where they need to be specific to a type of grammar then we need
special interfaces for that (ala the xni.psvi package).  All this class
will ever do, I think, is turn grammars from Strings with special formats
into binary objects--whether that's more accurately described as parsing or
compiling I can't say.  All I know is that parser is a loaded word in the
XML world, and if we go down this path I don't think it's well-suited here.

And BTW, I'm less unfavourably-disposed to this idea after John Utz's post;
although I'm still not sure grammar compilers will take off in the user
community, I can definitely see why it might be useful to be able to put a
filter in front of our native grammar compilation mechanism, even if one
isn't implementing from scratch...

Anyway, I've said way more than my share on this issue; so I'll go away for
a little while.  :-)

Cheers,
Neil
Neil Graham
XML Parser Development
IBM Toronto Lab
Phone:  905-413-3519, T/L 969-3519
E-mail:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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