Re: Must vs. fatal error

Richard Tobin wrote:

> It does seem worth allowing for processors that can't return any
> non-fatal errors when they are otherwise successful.  We are
> considering removing the phrase "to the application invoking it" from
> the quoted sentence, so that it would acceptable merely to print a
> warning to the user.  We are not however happy with the idea of these
> errors being silently ignored - that would not help interoperability.
> 
> Does that help you?

Not really, no. A library such as XOM should not talk to the user in any 
way. Specifically, it should not print anything on System.out or 
System.err. (This is a longstanding complaint I have about Xerces. XOM 
goes to some lengths to hide the warning Xerces prints.) XOM talks only 
to the client application, and it's up to the client application to 
decide what to show or not show the end-user. Indeed, in many cases 
there may not be any end user or even a console where messages printed 
on System.out and System.err can be seen.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

Received on Thursday, 12 May 2005 10:45:53 UTC