[kaffe] CVS kaffe (dalibor): Merged in gjdoc and libxmlj

[Julian Scheid]

Hello everybody,

Dalibor Topic wrote:
>>   Do I understand correctly that Libxmlj is the wrapper around libxml2
>> that was added in classpathx ? If yes do you know where I could find
>> some informations about the way they made the wrapping and how it
>> maps with the Java APIs ?
> 
> The earliest announcement I could find is at
> http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/cp-tools-discuss/2003-02/msg00015.html

I think I never posted a followup to this due to lack of feedback. Aside
from a mention by Mark Wielaard a couple of weeks after the announcement,
back then it seemed like noone was really interested in it :( I'm glad to
hear that this has changed meanwhile.

Anyway, I don't think I touched the code since Feb 2003, so there are no
news.

> It's really a wrapper around libxslt. It comes with a native JNI part, 
> and a set of java classes.

That's correct. I think the source code is quiet tidy, not too big and
more or less well documented - please take a look at it (in particular,
the Java side of things) to get the big picture. The README should also
contain some additional information.

As for "how [libxmlj] maps with the Java APIs", it is a partial
implementation of the Java API for XML Transformations (package
javax.xml.transform). Again, see the README for further information.

It works basically by wrapping calls to libxslt using JNI. Unfortunately,
libxslt is not thread safe (reentrant), doesn't allow binding user
values to all internal data structures and doesn't provide callback hooks
for all events IIRC - this makes the whole thing kind of hackish.

I didn't look at the latest version of libxslt, but I fear that a wrapper
which is 100% conforming to the Sun specs will not be possible or only
by going great lengths. I would have to look deeper into the code however
in order to be able to say something more specific about this.

If you have any other questions, I'll try to answer them as good as I
can, however I didn't look at the code myself for months.

Cheers,

Julian

(BTW my last name is spelled Scheid, not Schied.)