[gdome]ANNOUNCE: gmetadom 0.0.1

[Luca Padovani <padovani scl csd uwo ca>]

Hi folks,

this is to announce the first public release of gmetadom, whose aim is to 
provide a set of DOM implementations for different programming languages, 
or alternative implementations for the same language. For example, in the 
case of C++, several implementations are admissible, depending on easiness 
of use, flexibility, memory occupation, and so on. Thus, the aim of 
gmetadom is to provide a coherent set of implementations, among which the 
developer can choose the one fitting his/her needs.

In this release, in particular, there is a just binding for C++ based on 
Gdome2, where objects are actually smart pointers (much like in Tobias 
Peters' implementation).

There's also a set of abstract C++ classes to be extended and implemented 
in a future release.

Among the characteristics:

- DOM compliant strings. That is, strings are stored as sequences 
of 16 bit units, and are encoded in UTF-16. Note that this does not mean 
that all the strings in the document are encoded that way. It just means 
that when you ask for a string, or when you have to provide one, that 
string must be encoded in UTF16. Automatic conversion from C-strings and 
Gdome2 strings are provided, no explicit allocation or management is 
required by the programmer

- Most of the code is generated automatically from a XML description of 
DOM interfaces. This XML description can be found into the DOM 
specification (XML format), thus it can be regarded as the "official" one.

- Transformation from the XML description to source code (C++ for now) is 
provided by XSLT stylesheets, and in particular using the xsltproc utility 
from the libxslt package.

- As for the source code, documentation in HTML format is automatically 
generated from the same XML description. Data types and binding names are 
adapted to the particular requirements of the target language.

The home page of the project is

	http://gmetadom.sourceforge.net

and the download section can be found from here

	http://sourceforge.net/projects/gmetadom/

The OCaml binding should come soon, along with at least another binding 
for C++.

Enjoy,

	luca