[XML-SIG] Developer's Day

[Thomas B. Passin]

----- Original Message -----
Paul wrote:
> "Andrew M. Kuchling" wrote:
> >
> > Huh?  There's obviously a good deal of stuff in there, some of it
> > perhaps too esoteric, but I don't see where there's overlap.
>
> Well, there are several parsers and parser wrappers. How is a user
> supposed to choose? And there is PyDOM, Minidom and qp_dom.
>
> > Or are
> > you talking about Python tools in general, where there are 3 DOM
> > implementations?  (PyDOM, 4DOM, and ZDOM hiding inside Zope.)
>
> That too.
>
> > I lean against shoveling more stuff into 1.6; better to get the
> > Distutils widely used, which makes it easier to install *all* Python
> > extensions.
>
> I don't think that XML is any more of an "add-on" to a modern scripting
> language than URL support or regular expression support. I'm in the
> "batteries included" camp for this and several other reasons:
>
Hear, Hear!  For another scripting language example, look at Rebol.  Very
small executable code, and libraries for just about all key Internet
protocols are built in with no imports needed.  Loading a url or ftp-ing a
file are trivial. Shallow parsing is a bit wierd but easy.  Has a built-in
CGI mode.  Standard Python should be no less capable.

> * standard Python libraries may soon need XML support. If WebDAV takes
> off then there should be a libWebDAV right alongside libftp and libhttp.
> And libWebDAV will require XML
>
> * there is a difference between theory and practice. In theory,
> distutils will be done soon and everything will be easy. In practice, it
> is the end of 1999 and at every conference I have to install the XML sig
> package on the machines of several people who haven't been able to get
> it going themselves. In practice, we can't wait for distutils because
> people are choosing their XML tools now.
>
Yes, I had a lot of trouble getting XML-SIG to run on my Windows95 machine,
especially the expat wrapper.  It's working now, at last.  And I never did
get sgmlop working - it complained than the C API was a more advanced
version than the one on my Python 1.5.2 distribution.  For that matter, I
couldn't get tkinter working until I copied several tcl.tk DLLS into the
python DLL folder.  Clean installations are of PRIME importance!

<snip/>

Regards,

Tom Passin