XML: status update

[Daniel Veillard w3 org]

I wrote, some time ago:
>   Ok, it seems that at least a few people are interested in an XML
> support for Gnome, but I'm afraid of "polluting" the main gnome list
> with XML related discussions. I would prefer fork off a different channel
> I can host a mailing list for this purpose, no problem. Just send me a
> direct mail if interested and if I get more than half a dozen addresses
> I will create the list and the archive.

  Following Miguel comment on keeping the discussions on the main list,
and considering that until now I received just 5 proposal for subscription
to the list I guess it's reasonable to continue discussing this topic
on the gnome-list ML.

  Here are the developments I would like to contribute:
    - an XML parser, hopefully as complete as possible with namespace
      support.
        http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xml-lang
	http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xml-names
    - I suggest having an in-memeory tree output from the parser, so that
      the actual data representation matches closely the DOM API.
      (We can discuss that, some people actually tend to prefer a parser
       with a low level interface, i.e. producing tokens consumed by
       the upper layer)
    - An DOM implementation following as closely as possible the spec
      from the DOM WG:
         http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-DOM/
    - Some support for RDF
         http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax/
    - Corba interfaces for the XML parser, DOM and RDF engine
 The goal is to provide basing XML document manipulation code which can be
embedded into the application or accessed through Corba.
 By itself this can be useful as a back-end to save and retrieve structured
informations encoded in XML.
 I already have some code available that I use for RPM metadata encoding/decoding
so this is not a project built from the vacuum, I mainly need to complete the
implementations, clean-up the APIs, build the Corba interfaces, and integrate
if with a couple of apps I have in mind ... You can grab the existing code
from http://dev.w3.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb (in the XML dir, the RDF stuff is
still in the rpmfind and rpm2html directories).

  This however lacks an important part of what should be the ideal XML support,
i.e. the rendering of such an XML content, either from a browser point of view
or for editing. One of the persons from the MNmemonic project seems to have
started doing this kind of things I would be happy to help, but I don't feel
being the main developper for the rendering (well I spent some time doing the
CSS implementation in Amaya and I definitely think that I'm not an user interface
expert, just the opposite :-\ ).
  Comment, proposals, and flames welcome (don't forget we are on the main
gnome list :-)

 Daniel

P.S. I would be interested too in providing a Network access module for
     HTTP and FTP based on the libWWW code (in the same CVS base).
     How many Gnome apps already have some FTP or HTTP support ? What tools
     do they use and is there any proposal for a network access API ?

-- 
Daniel.Veillard@w3.org | W3C  MIT/LCS  NE43-344  | Today's Bookmarks :
Tel: +1 617 253 5884  | 545 Technology Square   | Linux, WWW, rpm2html,
Fax: +1 617 258 5999  | Cambridge, MA 02139 USA | badminton, Kaffe,
http://www.w3.org/People/W3Cpeople.html#Veillard | HTTP-NG and Amaya.