Problem with processing XML

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi,

Paul Boddie wrote:
> I'm not disputing the benefits of the ElementTree approach, but one
> has to recall that the DOM is probably the most widely used XML API
> out there (being the one most client-side developers are using) and
> together with the other standards (XPath and so on) isn't as bad as
> most people like to make out.

I didn't deny that it works in general. However, it does not fit into the
standard ways things work in Python.


> Furthermore, I don't think it does
> Python much good to have people "acting all Ruby on Rails" and telling
> people to throw out everything they ever did in order to suck up the
> benefits, regardless of the magnitude of those benefits; it comes
> across as saying that "your experience counts for nothing compared to
> our superior skills". Not exactly the best way to keep people around.

I would have formulated it a bit different from my experience, which usually
is: people complain on the list that they can't manage to get X to work for
them. Others tell them: "don't use X, use Y", implicitly suggesting that you
may have to learn it, but it will help you get your problem done in a way that
you can /understand/ (i.e. that will fix your code for you, by enabling you to
fix it yourself).

>From my experience, this works in most (although admittedly not all) cases.
But in any case, this reduction of complexity is an important step towards
making people ask less questions.


> As I noted in my chronology, the kind of attitude projected by various
> people in the Python community at various times (and probably still
> perpetuated in the Ruby community) is that stuff originating from the
> W3C is bad

The W3C is good in defining standards for portability and interoperability.
APIs rarely fall into that bag. They should be language specific as they are
made for use in a programming language, and therefore must match the way this
language works.

However, programming languages themselves are sometimes made for
interoperability, and this is definitely true for XSLT and XQuery. I am a big
fan of domain specific languages, because they (usually) are great in what
they are designed for, and nothing more.


> like the DOM stuff, if the support for standardised/
> recognised technologies is perceived as deficient, and given the point
> above about glossing over what people themselves bring with them to
> solve a particular problem, then people are quite likely to gloss over
> Python than hear anyone's sermon about how great Python's other XML
> technologies are.

It's not about "other XML technologies", it's only about making the standard
XML technologies accessible and usable. It's about designing interfaces in a
way that matches the tool people are using anyway, which in this case is Python.

Stefan