[XML-SIG] State of the world

[Andrew Kuchling]

It's probably a good time to look at the current state of affairs in
this SIG, and to raise a few issues worth considering.

	* On the xml-dev mailing list, David Megginson's Java SAX
implementation is now at 1.0beta, and the interface has been frozen
except for bug fixes.  Once it goes final, the Python SAX interface
can be modified to match the frozen interface, and then SAX will be
pretty much done.  (Well, there will probably be a level 2 SAX
interface someday, but that's no great concern at the moment.)
 
	* I don't know when the W3C's DOM working group is planning to
finalize the Level 1 DOM spec.  (Is anyone following the WG closely,
and can tell us what the planned schedule is?)  In any case, we should
start carefully checking the DOM implementation against the current
working draft <http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-DOM/>, and try to move in
compliance with it.

	* In the String-SIG, Martin von Loewis posted another patch
that adds Unicode to the Python core.  I've been meaning to take a
look at it, but haven't got around to it yet, so work on Unicode is
still progressing, though not very quickly.

Open issues:

	* With one API frozen and the other solidifying, we can start
thinking about how to distribute the Python code.  My inclination is
that individual authors such as Lars and Stefane will always
distribute their code as single pieces, but there will also be an
omnibus package that contains everything -- SAX, DOM, xmltok, JPython
code, documentation, demo programs, and anything else we can think of.
Most users will install this package.  I'm willing to do that
packaging job.

	* Also, we need a single factory function for instantiating
XML parsers, that will use xmltok if it's available, the appropriate
Java parser in JPython, and xmllib if there's nothing more specialized 
installed.

	* xmltok seems to have changed names, to expat.  Probably 
the Python extension should follow suit.

	* We need to come to some resolution about handling multiple
XML documents coming from a single input source. (This is the problem
I ran into with xml.marshal, which prevents the code from marshalling
two Python objects to the same file and then reading them in again.)

Anything else we need to consider?

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.skyport.net/crew/amk/
Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible---or even sinful---that you
burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes!
	-- Dr. Paul MacCready Jr.