JUMBO Bugs, Features, etc.

1998-01-27

Latest (1998-02-01)

Timescales

When new languages are developed it is important to have prototype implementations and this provided some of my motivation. Therefore JUMBO tracks the emerging XML specs (at present XML, XLL and XSL) as fast as they are developed. In general these will change quite rapidly during periods of intense discussion and decision on the XML-SIG and XML-WG. The price is sometimes that early decisions take time to remove. XML was originally case-insensitive and JUMBO was designed on this basis; when it changed it took time to locate and alter the various places where insensitivity might be hidden. Similarly the XLL spec changed a lot in mid-1997 and some of the features have not been implemented completely. In some cases features of the languages have no obvious place in generic software. So, at present, xml:space, xml:link="extended" and "group" and some other features have no special code in JUMBO.
 

Unimplemented aspects or personal views of the spec

XML

Many of the features below are unimportant in rendering the output for parsers but matter when JUMBO is used as an authoring/editing system. Some await a consistent (or at least stable) interface with DTD information from various parsers (e.g. ATTLISTs).

XLL

The following are currently not implemented

XPointers

The following are not implemented

JDK and AWT limitations

JUMBO is deliberately restricted to JDK 1.02 so that it can run under browsers. JDK 1.02 (especially the AWT) is known to have limitations, some of which are highly browser-and platform-dependent. Many of the problems below should disappear naturally when JUMBO is developed under JDK1.1 (the 9801 release should be the last using 1.02).

Known problems:

JUMBO Bugs

The following are design flaws which need to be resolved before the next main release: The following are messy. I don't always have a complete diagnosis of the problem.  Back to JUMBO index

Copyright Peter Murray-Rust, 1998