XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[William Vambenepe <william.vambenepe AT oracle.com>]

The Nux ResultSequenceSerializer class supports two algorithms for 
serializing an XPath/XQuery result sequence: 
ResultSequenceSerializer.W3C_ALGORITHM and 
ResultSequenceSerializer.WRAP_ALGORITHM.

The W3C algorithm has several shortcomings, as documented in the 
ResultSequenceSerializer Javadoc 
(http://acs.lbl.gov/nux/api/nux/xom/xquery/ResultSequenceSerializer.html). 
Overall, the situation is not bright for flexible and interoperable XML 
serialization of XPath/XQuery results 
(http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/197).

The "wrap algorithm" from Nux, on the other hand, appears very simple 
and useful. Why the W3C didn't take a similar approach is something I'd 
like to understand if anyone has any insight. But that's not the most 
important at this point. What I am looking for is a serialization 
algorithm I can point people to as part of specifying a protocol that 
returns the result of an XPath evaluation.

I'd like to simply tell them "do what Nux does", but only Microsoft gets 
away with that kind of implementation-centric specification language 
(hello OOXML). Even though it's pretty easy to look at the Nux code (the 
WrapSerializer nested class) and figure the algorithm. Or to run a few 
XPath queries through it to see how each node type gets wrapped. Still, 
I'd like to have a plain English description of the algorithm. But I 
haven't been able to find such a thing. Does it exist?

(Apologies if the XOM mailing list is not the right place to ask this. 
The Nux site gives the choice of this list and the Saxon mailing list 
and it seemed to fit better here.)

William