[XML-SIG] Future plans

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

For most of 1999 I've been incompetent in fostering the XML-SIG's
work; things have been left to drift while I was distracted by other
things, and now it's time to get things moving again.  The 0.5.2
release is part of this, and I'm going to try to issue new versions
fairly often (no slower than monthly) from now on.

Some things to do:

     * I propose dropping the wstrop and xmlarch code from the CVS
       tree: wstrop because Python 1.6 will have built-in Unicode
       support of some strip, and xmlarch because architectual forms
       are fairly rarely used, and don't need to be in the core.

     * What about namespace support in SAX -- what's the status of SAX2?

     * The DOM needs more work.  I've fixed the braindamaged __getattr__
       that was terribly slow; building a DOM tree of "The Winter's
       Tale" now takes around 25 seconds, not 80.  (4DOM takes around
       12 seconds for the same job.)  The accessor methods
       need to be renamed to match the Python CORBA mapping, and the
       code needs to be brought up to DOM Level 2, which will add
       namespace support.
       
       I'm still wondering if it's worth maintaining a second DOM
       implementation in parallel with 4DOM.  4DOM 0.9.0 already
       implements Core Level 2 according to Uche's recent
       announcement.  
       
       I worry about 4DOM requiring you to do ReleaseNode() in order
       to break cycles, envisioning tricky bugs where you forget to 
       release a node and end up leaking memory, or where you release
       too soon.  Perhaps this is just paranoia; for most common
       applications, maybe you just create a DOM tree, rearrange it,
       write it out, and then release the whole tree -- no tricky
       business about keeping some nodes and releasing others.
       Any 4DOM users/developers want to comment on this?

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
Posting an article with a malformed address so that mail bounces when people
reply: Poster and/or their admin are sent back to kindergarten.
    -- Kibo, in the Happynet Manifesto