XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

I've checked the new Serializer into CVS. You can view it here:

https://xom.dev.java.net/source/browse/xom/src/nu/xom/Serializer.java?rev=1.9&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

This is reasonably backwards compatible. If you're just setting a few 
options on a Serializer and then writing some documents, it behaves 
the same as it has for the last year. However, there are some new 
features, and some additional methods intended to make life easier 
for subclassers.

1. You can instruct the serializer to normalize all data using 
Unicode Normalization Form C. This includes both text and markup. 
Normalization is off by default.

2. You can change the serializer's underlying output stream using the 
new setOutputStream method. This allows programs to use the same 
options for pretty printing, normalization, and the like on different 
output streams.

3. There is a new static Serializer.write(document, stream) 
convenience method that writes the specified document onto the 
specified output stream using the default options. It makes a lot of 
simple cases even simpler.

However, this is the one addition I'm least confident of. For one 
thing it almost calls out for variants that allow different options 
to be set; e.g. Serializer.write(document, stream, indent); 
Serializer.write(document, stream, encoding); 
Serializer.write(document, stream, indent, encoding); etc. This could 
get out of hand fairly quickly. I'm wondering if this belongs in a 
separate class, or perhaps should be removed completely.

4. Subclasses can now act at a more granular level using these new 
protected methods:

writeStartTag
writeEndTag
writeEmptyElementTag
writeXMLDeclaration
writeAttributes
writeNamespaceDeclarations
writeNamespaceDeclaration

Also, I added a protected getColumnCount method that aids subclasses 
in implementing their own line breaking strategy.

Finally, writePCDATA has been renamed writeEscaped and writeMarkup 
has been renamed writeRaw because I noticed that in subclasses they 
weren't always being used for PCDATA and markup respectively. 
writeMarkup, in particular, was often used to write PCDATA in other 
formats that needed their own escaping scheme.

Comments are appreciated.
--

  Elliotte Rusty Harold
  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
  Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)
  http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA