[XML-SIG] xmlproc/DOM vs. WebL?

[John Day]

Hi,

I'm a newbie to both Python and XML, trying to figure
out how it works and how to make it useful for creating
Web agents, concept databases etc.

I have recently stumbled across another scripting language
called "WebL", which seems to be a smallish but elegant
XML/HTML interpreter written in Java. COMPAQ is giving
it away free w/src for non-commercial use:

http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/WebL/

My reason for addressing this group is that I would like to
know how it stacks up against Python/XML. In particular, does
Python have any XML functions that do 'markup algebra' as
described in the WebL docs? How would you compare their
respective capabilities in general? (I'm hoping one you
Python gurus has already looked at WebL).

The WebL script examples for web-crawling and other agent actions are
amazingly small. (On the downside, they seem to run extremely
slowly on my machine).

Perhaps there is some functionality here that could be applied
to Python/XML. My hunch is that this markup algebra stuff could
run a lot faster in Python.

John Day