                      XML Im-/Exporter README

XML Im-/Exporter is a low level library to assist you in the straight
forward process of importing and exporting XML from and to your Java
classes. All of this is designed having performance and simplicity in mind.

XML Im-/Exporter consists of three parts explained in the following.

1.) XML ENCODING AND DECODING HELPERS ON THE CHARACTER (NOT THE BYTE) LEVEL

Set of methods to encode and decode characters special to XML (like & and
< and ' and ").

2.) WRITING DATA TO FORMATTED XML

You can write your data into a formatted XML writer. Formatting and
encoding is done as straight forward as possible. Everything you know
better than this class must be done by you. In effect, no unexpected so called
intelligent behavior is to be feared. Another effect is high speed and
simplicity.

3.) SIMPLE IMPORTER

Simple and fast importer for XML configuration or import files. 
It is based on SAX and can be considered an extension to it. This
means it is callback oriented and does not build an internal data
structure like the DOM. While SAX is simple, fast, and memory friendly
it might be a bit too rudimentary for most tasks. SimpleImporter adds
more high level means for importing XML while preserving the SAX's
benefits. These are the main extensions to the SAX: 

- Every callback includes a full path to the XML element: In many
cases this will make maintaining local stacks for keeping track of
element histories obsolete.  
- Leading character data can be included into start element callback:
In many cases import files do not or only rarely contain mixed
content. If so it is convenient to have the the full content of an
element at hand with a single callback. 
- More than one listener can be registered: Some XML files contain
different types of data that may be interesting to different
listeners. E.g. data to import from a server may contain error
messages along with the real content data. It may be convenient to
processes these blocks of data seperately.  

SimpleImporter is meant to take the place of tools like digester from
the apache pepole and similar ones. So, if you are satisfied with
these tools, stick to them, forget about SimpleImporter. But if you,
like me, prefer simple and explicite tools that do their job over
rather complex, implicit, rule based tools like digester,
SimpleImporter may be just right. 

                              COPYRIGHT

XML Im-/Exporter: Copyright 2002-2004, Oliver Zeigermann (oliver@zeigermann.de)

For copying permission see "Copying.txt" in this directory.
