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I don't actually need or want the validation - what I do want is the type hints it provides to objectify. Is there a way to pass the schema type information to objectify without also performing validation?

I think you're mistaken: There is no information taken from the schema for the objectify type annotations.

Indeed you are correct - I am mistaken. I did several experiments and thought I saw it casting to the schema-specified types, but I just repeated them and it must just have been too much wishful thinking.

This comes up from time to time but so far no one has made an effort to implement a generalized solution for lxml.

See also https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/pipermail/lxml/2008-January/003245.html

Paraphrasing (I think): libxml2 doesn't make the schema information readily accessible, which makes it difficult to implement this efficiently. Thanks for your help! -- Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft http://www.object-craft.com.au/