[XML-SIG] What's New section on XML

[Martin v. Loewis]

> Beats me.  It doesn't seem to be a strict L1 implementation, since
> last night I found some non-compliances.  See bugs #116677 and #116678
> on SourceForge.  I've assigned them to Paul for fixing, but if someone
> else wants to tackle them, feel free; I may attempt to write a patch
> myself.

minidom is quite a limited implementation of the DOM, with many
details missing. It seems the general rule is not to provide
"convenience functions", i.e. if something can be achieved by other
means, then don't provide this function. It is sufficient for building
a tree from a document and analyzing it; I probably wouldn't attempt
heavy structural manipulations on the tree (*).

We'll have to see how well users accept that approach. It may be
desirable to fully conform to DOM Core (of some level) for a later
Python release, even if that means that minidom will grow in size and
perhaps even slow down.

Regards,
Martin

(*) It would be intereresting to survey what people *do* use the DOM
for; it's not all that clear to me that all features of the DOM are
really in use.