Draft Spec updated

[Steve Poole <sp...@googlemail.com>]

Greetings

I said I'd post a copy of the latest spec draft and its here  on the wiki.
 Its available off this page
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KATO/JSR326Specification

The various API changes we've discussed are reflected in the document -  the
new FactoryRegistry  and  the new dump creation classes for instance - plus
other changes , new examples etc.
The document needs some TLC to sort out  fonts and spacings and the diagrams
now look a little old.  Oh and of course there are various descriptions that
need expanding!

As well as working through the words in the document I'd  also like to
complete two areas we have discussed but not really resolved.

The first is about error reporting -  I still don't like the checked
exception design :-)

The second is about the use of Lists.

I added Lists to the API (in place of Iterators ) so that I could allow
random access to elements.  I now know  there are problems with that
approach too. Its likely in some places that the dump can't provide an
indication of the number of elements available unless it reads everything
first!.  Most of the  methods on the List interface are superfluous to our
needs as well so I do think that they have to go.

Its been a while since we talked about these topics so I shall read the old
posts before I post more...


-- 
Steve