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<H1>Release 41</H1>
<H2>Editorial</H2>
What happened to Release 40? Well, that was a silent release.
It has been up on the website for a while but I didn't advertise
it. Many thanks to pnl.gov for giving me a little code patch
that greatly increased the performance of the parser.
CString sucks!
<H2>This Release</H2>
I've been tweaking the XML stuff, cleaning up the samples and
fixing bugs, tweaking performance, etc.
<P>
In the past six months, I've worked on the
<A HREF="http://www.w3.org/TR/" TARGET="_parent">XML</A>
classes almost exclusively. I now consider it to be a decent
XML parser. It won't parse UTF-8 encoded documents (ASCII,
UNICODE and UCS4 is OK) but it will write them. It is a
standalone parser. It parses all but two of James Clark's
test files (found at
<A HREF="http://www.jclark.com/xml/" TARGET="_parent">http://www.jclark.com/xml/</A>).
One refers to an external reference (097.XML) and the other is
UTF-8 encoded (063.XML). I started writing the XML classes in the
wrong way. I coded up an XML parser then had to back fill it with
all of the SGML baggage (inconsistencies, complexities and down
right stupidity).
What started as a nice little parser has now turned into an ugly
hairball of code. These changes have really slowed down the parser.
It now takes about 3125 milliseconds (a little over 3 seconds) to
parse Shakespeare's "Love's Labor's Lost& (many thanks to
Jon Bosak for creating the XML). This document is
206,945 bytes long and contains 15,126 elements. I ran the parser on
my development machine (P5-100 with 64MB RAM running Windows NT 4.0
build 1381 service pack 4). Nearest I can figure, Microsoft's XML
parser (MSXML.DLL version 5.00.2314.1000) takes about 11 seconds to
parse the same file (and <B>MUCH</B> longer to display it).
<P>
My XML parser parses bytes. It knows nothing of files, sockets
or other such application-level objects. Because of this, my parser
cannot reach out and touch things that other parsers assume will
be there (like files or web sites). Any communication mechanisms
are assumed to be application level objects and are not available
to my XML parser.<P>
<H2>What's New</H2>
<B><A HREF="CMemoryFile.htm">CMemoryFile</A></B> - A simple memory
mapped file class. It takes care of that silly allocation granularity
alignment problem. I can't remember if this was in release 38 or not
but now it is documented.
<P>
<B><A HREF="wfc_create_hard_link.htm">wfc_create_hard_link</A></B> - If you
just can't wait for that NT 5.0 API <CODE>CreateHardLink()</CODE>, here's
a function that will create two directory entries for one file. In the
good old DOS days, that used to be known as a cross-link error.
<P>
<B>wfc_append_string_to_CByteArray</A></B> - I just got
tired of writing while loops all over the place.
<P>
<B><CODE>wfc_coverage.h</CODE></B> - This header file implements a
simple code coverage analysis system. I use it to test classes
to make sure all the code I've written is actually executed.
<P>
<B><CODE>wfc_linker_setup.h</CODE></B> - This header file fixes the
LNK2005 problems. Turns out, we need to define <CODE>_AFX_NOFORCE_LIBS</CODE>
before we include <CODE>afx.h</CODE>. This header file makes sure
the link libraries are included in the proper order.
<P>
<H2>Bug Fixes/Enhancements</H2>
<B><A HREF="CDataParser.htm">CDataParser</A></B> -
Added more functions. It will interpret charcaters
now. Those characters can be in ASCII, UNICODE
(big and little endian) as well as UCS-4 (big endian,
little endian, unusual 2143 or unusual 3412).
<B><A HREF="CXMLD.htm">CExtensibleMarkupLanguageDocument</A></B> -
I've added more write options. It will now write the document out
in ASCII, UTF-8, UNICODE (big and little endian) and UCS-4
(big endian, little endian, unusual 2143 and unusual 3412).
It will also automatically detect and parse those same character
encodings except UTF-8.
<BR>
You can now specify your own character to separate parents and
children when getting elements via the <B>GetElement()</B> method.
I was using a period (.) but that is a legal name character.
<P>
<B><A HREF="CXMLE.htm">CExtensibleMarkupLanguageElement</A></B> -
Lots of bugs fixed here.
<UL>
<LI>ENTITY's that were only > are now parsed correctly.
<LI>When a parse fails, it will tell you the rule number that caused the failure.
<LI>Lots of little bug fixes
</UL>
<P>
<B><A HREF="CRandomNumberGenerator2.htm">CRandomNumberGenerator2</A></B> -
Now returns something other than zero when you call <B>GetFloat()</B>.
<B>CWfcTrace</B> - Now supports printing SIZE, RECT, POINT, LARGE_INTEGER and
ULARGE_INTEGER structures. A bug where '%' appeared in the output string wasn't
being displayed is fixed.
<HR>
<A HREF="Release38.htm">Release 38 Notes</A><P>
<ADDRESS>Sam Blackburn</ADDRESS>
<ADDRESS><A HREF="mailto:wfc@pobox.com">wfc@pobox.com</A></ADDRESS>
<A HREF="homepage.htm" TARGET="_parent">Return to Sam's Home Page</A>
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