[Expat-discuss] Lack of symmetry: How to create XML

[Fred Drake]

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Egil Kvaleberg <egil at kvaleberg.com> wrote:
> So, without further ado, let me hereby suggest that eXpat is extended by
> a very lightweight set of functions to also generate XML. The additional
> overhead to the existing library is in fact entirely minimal.

I concur that something better than fprintf would be a win for dealing
with generation.  I'm also happy to defer to others for what a good C
API for that would look like, since I don't use eXpat from C for
applications.

I will note two things, which you've probably already thought about:

- many applications consume XML without ever generating it, and

- one of eXpat's goals is to be gentle on the memory footprint.

Given this, I'd rather see someone come up a *separate* library for
XML generation; there are also applications out there than want to
generate XML without consuming it, and they could similarly benefit
from a decent library for the purpose.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.    <fdrake at gmail.com>
"A storm broke loose in my mind."  --Albert Einstein