XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Steve Loughran <steve.loughran AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mascolino, Mark R.
<mark.mascolino AT hp.com> wrote:
> http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/jar/jar.html#JAR%20Manifest
> mentions a 72 byte per line limit.
> This bug report from Sun:
> http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4842483
> suggests the 72 byte limit is silly and is a legacy of adopting an outdated 
> RFC from the 70s that isn't super relevant (although I suppose the people 
> who write embedded device code or apps for platforms with limited 
> horsepower would beg to differ).

You don't want to break the 70 +CRLF ASCII char limit, you are on your
own if that happens. some of the app servers have their own parsers,
then there are the J2ME phones. Its a lovely source of bug reports for
Ant. The fact that there is no JCP for this, just stuff in the
javadocs for the JDKs -that isn't consistent over time- makes life
more fun.

-if you chop the line at exactly the right point, the parser pulls in
the line that follows it if it has a leading space or something
-you have to work out the length of the ASCII format of the line, not
the unicode length
-CRLF at the end
-other things to do with multiple classpath entries, any other bits of
special treatment

Ant's <manifest> task really does do the right thing as far as anyone
can tell, dont worry about the spacing.
docs: http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/manifest.html
svn changelog that shows how understanding has grown over time
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/ant/core/trunk/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Manifest.java?view=log

-Steve