Re:Re: [boost] additional boost libraries?

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-20 11:32:48

Vladimir Prus wrote:

>> and, just out of curiosity:
>> xml/html parsing

>None so far. In fact, it seems unlikely that somebody will come along and 
>implement all the XML stack (DOM, XPath, XML Schema, XSTL, whatever) right 
>now. One chance would be is somebody boostify some existing XML toolkit -- 
>but which one?

>Another chance is to initially create "tiny XML" library. In fact, both 
>regression tools and serialization have their own tiny XML parsers and
>users aksed about XML support for program_options, so such library might
>really be  usefull.

Note that the serialization library relies upon Spirit 100 % for XML
parsing.  The spirit package included a very complete example by Dan Nuffer
for parsing XML.  I copied that (along with a 50 line copyright notice !!!)
and slimmed it down to my needs.  I had to re-organize a little bit to
handle botch char and wchar_t characters.  And spirit is kind of abstract so
it has a learning curve. Then just when I got "done" (the first time) it was
announced that development of spirit was being forked - ARRRRGGGGHHH.  Since
the spirit developers have seen fit to maintain backward compatibility
things have worked well.  The code compiles on both spirit 1.6 - the
"supported old version" as well Spirit 1.8 - so I'm pleased that the
serialization package can be use spirit and still support older compilers
without me having to write a yet another half-assed home brew xml parser.

I suspect that Spirit is under-appreciated and maybe a little bit ahead of
its time.  It takes patience, It takes effort, it can sometimes drive you
crazy, but using it can make your life better in the long run. I guess its
sort of like being in love.

Robert Ramey