XML support in Tomcat 3.1

[Mark Brouwer <ma...@virgil.nl>]

Today I thought about migrating our JSP 1.0 applications to Tomcat 3.1
milestone 1, but the result was not that satisfactory. It seems support
for the XML equivalent of JSP tags has been removed in Tomcat 3.1,
leaving us with pretty :-( looking generated pages.

I know the promised part of 'JSP pages as XML documents' didn't make the
JSP 1.1 specs, but withdrawing simple support as provided in JSWDK seems
a little bit drastic to me.

We thought to be future proof by using all the XML equivalents and are
left with 3 options now: using another JSP 1.1 engine, wait for the next
JSP specs or change everything back so I can change it again in the
future. None of these options make me smile, please put the support back
in.
-- 
Mark Brouwer
Virgil B.V.

Re: XML support in Tomcat 3.1

[Mark Brouwer <ma...@virgil.nl>]

Danno Ferrin wrote:
> 
> The real problem is that the XML tags as supported in JWSDK is a
> mis-implemntation of the spec.  Mixing the classic and XML tags was
> never intended to be allowed, and Eduardo cleared that up in this list a
> little over a month ago.  The fact that it broke some backward
> compatibility was discussed, but the nature of Jakarta as a reference
> implementation requires strict adherence to what the spec actually says,
> not to what was implemented that was a mis-interpretation of the spec.
> 

OKE, I did see a thread at the moment but didn't pay that much attention
to it. I did look for an archive but was not successful.

>
> Just using <jsp:expression> ... </jsp:expression> as a replacement for
> <%@ ... %> is not proper according to the 1.0 or 1.1 spec without the
> presence of a jsp:root element and following the XML conventions in the
>

That's correct, however to be 'future proof' we inserted the root tag
and the document type declaration already (based on the JSP 1.1 specs,
we did know this was not final). We had them out commented for the ended
up in the HTML documents we generate, but support was there :-)

>
> content.  Furthermore the section of the spec that talks about XML pages
> discusses a transformation into an XML document from a JSP page, and
> implies thusly that the use of the XML tags should only be used in a
> fully transformed document.  The RI does not yet serve JSP pages that
> are stored as XML documents, but this is not to critical since the spec
> says that the transformation is not visible to JSP pages.  Furthermore
> there is no indication that the JSP tags are going to go away, so using
> the XML document transformation is not needed to "future proof" JSP
> pages.
> 

I know, but as we try do do as many as possible in XML notation (where
applicable) we thought a long time ago to make the right move.

> Perhaps what is needed is a tool that will de-XMLize jsp pages with
> mixed XMl and JSP tags into a JSP page.  Would this solve your problem?
> 

Well, to be honest I'm not that found of tools playing around with my
code, for matters of coding conventions etc. Just a matter of giving our
developers a lot of beer to do the job.

Thanks for the info,
-- 
Mark Brouwer
Virgil B.V.

Re: XML support in Tomcat 3.1

[Danno Ferrin <sh...@earthlink.net>]

The real problem is that the XML tags as supported in JWSDK is a
mis-implemntation of the spec.  Mixing the classic and XML tags was
never intended to be allowed, and Eduardo cleared that up in this list a
little over a month ago.  The fact that it broke some backward
compatibility was discussed, but the nature of Jakarta as a reference
implementation requires strict adherence to what the spec actually says,
not to what was implemented that was a mis-interpretation of the spec.

Just using <jsp:expression> ... </jsp:expression> as a replacement for
<%@ ... %> is not proper according to the 1.0 or 1.1 spec without the
presence of a jsp:root element and following the XML conventions in the
content.  Furthermore the section of the spec that talks about XML pages
discusses a transformation into an XML document from a JSP page, and
implies thusly that the use of the XML tags should only be used in a
fully transformed document.  The RI does not yet serve JSP pages that
are stored as XML documents, but this is not to critical since the spec
says that the transformation is not visible to JSP pages.  Furthermore
there is no indication that the JSP tags are going to go away, so using
the XML document transformation is not needed to "future proof" JSP
pages.

Perhaps what is needed is a tool that will de-XMLize jsp pages with
mixed XMl and JSP tags into a JSP page.  Would this solve your problem?

--Danno

Mark Brouwer wrote:
> 
> Today I thought about migrating our JSP 1.0 applications to Tomcat 3.1
> milestone 1, but the result was not that satisfactory. It seems support
> for the XML equivalent of JSP tags has been removed in Tomcat 3.1,
> leaving us with pretty :-( looking generated pages.
> 
> I know the promised part of 'JSP pages as XML documents' didn't make the
> JSP 1.1 specs, but withdrawing simple support as provided in JSWDK seems
> a little bit drastic to me.
> 
> We thought to be future proof by using all the XML equivalents and are
> left with 3 options now: using another JSP 1.1 engine, wait for the next
> JSP specs or change everything back so I can change it again in the
> future. None of these options make me smile, please put the support back
> in.
> --
> Mark Brouwer
> Virgil B.V.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: tomcat-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: tomcat-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org

RE: XML support in Tomcat 3.1

[Kevin Jones <ke...@develop.com>]

Doea anybody have a copy of Eduardo's post - I've searched the archives and
can't find it,

thanks,

Kevin Jones
DevelopMentor

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Brouwer [mailto:mark.brouwer@virgil.nl]
> Sent: 25 February 2000 16:19
> To: tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org
> Subject: XML support in Tomcat 3.1
>
>
> Today I thought about migrating our JSP 1.0 applications to Tomcat 3.1
> milestone 1, but the result was not that satisfactory. It seems support
> for the XML equivalent of JSP tags has been removed in Tomcat 3.1,
> leaving us with pretty :-( looking generated pages.
>
> I know the promised part of 'JSP pages as XML documents' didn't make the
> JSP 1.1 specs, but withdrawing simple support as provided in JSWDK seems
> a little bit drastic to me.
>
> We thought to be future proof by using all the XML equivalents and are
> left with 3 options now: using another JSP 1.1 engine, wait for the next
> JSP specs or change everything back so I can change it again in the
> future. None of these options make me smile, please put the support back
> in.
> --
> Mark Brouwer
> Virgil B.V.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: tomcat-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: tomcat-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org