Re: [boost] [xml] Brainstorming / Request for Comments, Suggestions, Opinions ...

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-06 19:30:41

Sebastian Redl wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> A few months ago I said I'd take on writing an XML library for Boost.
> Well, I've finally got some time on my hand and started with a little bit
> of brainstorming about the library.

Have you followed the discussions around my proposal for an XML API in
boost that I implemented on top of libxml2 (http://xmlsoft.org/) ?

I think that starting a new implementation from scratch is the wrong
way to approach this (rather big) topic.

This in particular since an 'XML library' shouldn't just provide
ways to de- and encode XML documents into generic tree structures,
but instead needs to provide quite a substantional amount of functionality
in order to be considered complete (even if you approach this in a modular
way). As an example, imagine querying your DOM-like structure with an
XPath expression. Think about all this does involve, from regular expression
handling, over XPath pattern matching, http lookup, entity handling, unicode,
etc., etc.

This is why I don't think that you should think about such a project
one step at a time (e.g. the 'XML reading side of things').

Regards,
                Stefan

-- 
      ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...