[Python-Dev] ElementTree in stdlib

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Steven Bethard wrote:
> I didn't really feel like the proposal was out of the blue.  The
> proposal has been brought up before, both on python-dev[1] and the
> python-list[2].  ElementTree has a pretty large following - if you
> look at XML-based questions on the python-list, I can almost guarantee
> you that someone will give an elementtree solution to it (and not just
> Fredrik).  I don't know much about any other APIs, so I'm not going to
> try to claim it's the best API or anything, but it is the best of what
> seems to have any user visibility on the python-list.

It's difficult to establish precise numbers, but I would expect that
most readers of xml-sig are well aware of how DOM and SAX work, perhaps
even better than ElementTree.

My main complaint about this was in the past that it is a Python-only
solution, so people working in multiple languages cannot reuse their
knowledge. It seems that this is irrelevant, as people don't work
in multiple languages so much. I still think that Python should continue
to provide standard APIs, for those that know how things are done
in Java.

Regards,
Martin