I’m doing it again! I’m writing another XML object generator for savant. Why on earth would I do that most will say?

1. Others like digester, JAXB 1.0, jibx, just make life difficult because they don’t handle multiple errors within a document. At the first sign of an error, they bail. Some Savant configuration files are XML and this is one of my greatest annoyances with other tools like ant. What I want is the ability to handle as much of the document as possible and look for as many errors as possible without bailing.

2. I know JAXB 2.0 doesn’t solve #1 but it is pretty freakin’ slick. However, I’m playing nice and using only JDK 1.4 (probably even 1.3) libraries and constructs. Sucks. I could ship the JRE with Savant and just use 1.5, but some companies have crazy policies about new JDK versions. They probably wouldn’t even know, but why cut out all those users just for ease of coding. Here’s a note to the world, please upgrade to 1.5! Do it now! It makes coding so much better and faster.

So, in the end I now hate XML even more than I did before and I’m going to write this stupid XML unmarshaller because that’s what needs to be done to appease my craving for good user experience. C’est la vie.