Re: XML libs (was Re: gconf backend)

[Peter Williams <peter newton cx>]

Hi all,

On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 16:49, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> I essentially agree that:
> 
>  - XML is too hard for apps to get right 
>  - we should try to use it anyway, as best we can
> 
> I would add:
> 
>  - sometimes it's OK to restrict the XML features you can use in a 
>    particular context, as long as you fail gracefully

Well, I know I shouldn't volunteer code for someone else to write, but
perhaps we can make a layer that sits on top of libxml and has some
guarantees:

	* Bomb if anything "complicated" happens (namespaced elements, PIs). Or
just ignore them.
	* Perform some canonical set of entity substitutions
	* Expose an XmlTextReader or SAX-like interface
	* Maybe add hooks for the app to complain about illegal content a la
Havoc's color values

In general, it seems to me that it should be possible to make something
that reads/writes compliant XML but doesn't force the app programmer to
write a lot of boilerplate code like:

	if (element_namespace != NULL)
		bomb ("Unexpected XML content.");
	
Anyway, it seems like the reasonable way to develop a simple API for
simple XML is on top of a more complex API for more complex XML, rather
than starting fresh.

Peter

-- 
Peter Williams                          peter newton cx

"[Ninjas] are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet."
                              -- REAL Ultimate Power