Why isn't XUL more popular?

[Jon Perez]

Whoops... stray post from netscape.public.dev.xul...

Jon Perez wrote:

> I find DOM to be unnecessarily verbose.  It looks very much like a
> bloated design-by-a-committee rather than a lean, mean spec designed by a
> few sharp minds.  It takes way too many calls to do something simple
> and the proper calls to use are non-obvious to a beginner.  It is really
> not that hard to imagine having a simpler API for manipulating XML.
> 
> I have been doing extensive DOM work using Javascript for many years
> now and while I'm quite deep into DOM (For example, I have developed a
> technique to dynamically load/modify any part of a webpage from a remote
> data source without reloading the entire page.  A much tougher task than
> you might think owing to Javascript/DOM API deficiencies and hence the need
> for 'voodoo' techniques), I must say I have never grown to love this API.
> 
> Among the many XML-manipulation libraries available for Python are two
> or three DOM implentations.  Despite my long experience with DOM under
> Javascript, I shun the DOM ones and instead use Fredrik Lundh's way more
> pythonic(*) ElementTree... waaaay easier to deal with.  Too bad it or a
> similar API is not available for doing DHTML. :-(
> 
> 
> (*) 'pythonic' is roughly translated as meaning quick to learn (one
> sitting), easy to use (e.g. small, easy-to-remember API) and powerful
> at the same time.