[Python-Dev] Performance of various marshallers

Skip Montanaro skip@pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Tue, 2 Oct 2001 13:57:25 -0500


    >> I suspect not.  It's special purpose is to parse or generate XML-RPC,
    >> so you know ahead of time that the end result is the only thing you
    >> need.

    Paul> One reason to use a full XML parser is you get Unicode cheaply. I
    Paul> don't see Unicode as a feature that you add in a weekend at the
    Paul> end...

XML-RPC's relationship to Unicode is ill-defined.  The spec that Dave Winer
wrote requires all data to be US-ASCII, so XML-RPC isn't really
XML-compliant.  (You'll have to take up issues of standards compliance with
Dave.)

Still, Unicode or not, the notion that XML-RPC is a data serialization
mechanism instead of a compound data markup language means you don't need to
provide hooks for processing each element, so full-blown XML parsers tend to
be overkill as py-xmlrpc demonstrates.  No matter how hard Shilad finds it
to add Unicode support to his package, it's still likely to be miles ahead
of other XML parsers.

Skip