[Python-Dev] ElementTree in stdlib

[Guido van Rossum]

I'm not so surprised that Fredrik chose to bypass XML-SIG. There
doesn't seem to be a lot of decision power there -- in fact it feels a
bit dead, with a weird mix of too-high-level discussions that don't go
anywhere, plus basic beginner's Q+A.

Also, it would seem that /F's ElementTree doesn't need much vetting --
it seems well established and well-known in the XML-SIG (it was listed
in all the overviews of APIs).

Finally, compared offerings based on e.g. 4thought (sp.?), ElementTree
feels much more practical and hence, might I say it, "pythonic".

--Guido

On 12/12/05, Mike Brown <mike at skew.org> wrote:
> Catching up on some python-dev email, I was surprised to see that things seem
> to be barrelling ahead with the adding of ElementTree to Python core without
> any discussion on XML-SIG. Sidestepping XML-SIG and the proving grounds of
> PyXML in order to satsify the demand for a Pythonic databinding+API for XML in
> stdlib seems to be a bit of a raised middle finger to those folks who have
> worked hard on competing or differently-scoped APIs, each of which deserves a
> bit more peer review than just a single nomination on python-dev, which seems
> to be all it took to obtain a blessing for ElementTree. I have nothing against
> ElementTree, and would like to see more XML processing options in core, but it
> seems to me like the XML-SIG is being deliberately left out of this process.
>
> Just last month, Guido submitted to XML-SIG a Pythonic XML API that he had
> been tinkering with.[1] I don't think anyone was really bold enough to tell
> him what they really thought of it (other than that it is a lot like XIST),
> but it was admirable that he put it up for peer review rather than just
> dropping it into stdlib. Perhaps more importantly, it prompted some discussion
> that more or less acknowledged that these kinds of APIs do seem to be the
> future of XML in Python, and that we should be thinking about bringing some of
> them into PyXML and, ultimately, stdlib. But the problem of how to choose from
> the many options also became immediately apparent.[2] The discussion stalled,
> but I think it should start up again, in the proper forum, rather than letting
> the first-mentioned API supplant the dozen+ alternatives that could also be
> considered as candidates.[3]
>
> Sorry to be a sourpuss.
>
> Mike
> --
>
> [1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2005-November/011248.html
>      (Guido's very civil proposal and request for peer review)
> [2] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2005-November/011252.html (this
>      also summarizes the categories of software/approaches that people are
>      taking to the general problem of working with XML Pythonically)
> [3] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/10/13/py-xml.html (and there are at least
>      3 more databinding APIs that have come out since then)
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org
>


--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)