Re: Questions about libxml2 and GnomeVFS support in libgsf

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 01:40:06AM +0000, Dave Malcolm wrote:
> I've had a brief look at the files gsf-libxml.h and .c within libgsf
>
> So if I take a GnomeVFS URI, use gsf_input_gnomevfs_new_uri to create a
> GsfInput from it, then use gsf_xml_parser_context to create a libxml2
> SAX context, should it "just work"?

Depends on how how you define 'work' (ya gotta love Clinton's legacy)

Yes - its will definitely go off and do standard parsing sorts of
        things _within_ that input

No - It will not magicly add support for retrieving other documents
        in related urls.

> Many of the SAX hooks in gsf-libxml.c are NULL.

I've planned to add support for entites, and possibly improve error
handling, but neither are especially high priority.  Your needs in
this area are likely to be significantly greater than ours.  Tell
use what you'd like to do and we can add it.

> Also, libgsf seems to
> have no concept of relative paths for me to use...

I'm not clear on what you mean here.

> Also:  are Gnome Office apps required to use GnomeVFS? or libgsf?

There are no hard and fast requirements at this point.  Gnumeric and
Abi seem to be moving towards gsf as the main interface because it
can handle gnome-vfs in addition to other formats directly.  I've
also been tempted to look at a libcurl based backend for network
operations.  That library seems actively maintained and quite
portable.