[XML-SIG] Future plans

[Paul Prescod]

Dieter Maurer wrote:
> 
> I have effectively discontinued work
> on my PyXPath implementation on top of PyDOM, because only
> very serious reasons justify the duplication of effort.

Dieter, is there any chance that your work could turn into a Python
parser for XPaths that could be used in place of the 4thought one? I'm
concerned about the portability of their C code. Even once they compile
for Windows, there is still the Mac and other funky stuff. It might be
nice to have a Python "backup" as with Pickle/CPickle, xmllib/sgmlop and
so forth.

> As for the explicite memory management necessary for 4DOM:
>   It is very easy to introduce cycles in Python's data structures.
>   I would expect that many non-trivial Python programs
>   contain such cycles and leak memory -- without dramatic
>   effect. I can live with explicite memory management for DOM trees,
>   even though they tend to be rather large structures.

I would like to suggest again the idea that for simple uses we could use
a proxy and that sophisticated users could "ask for" a fast version and
get back an unproxied version that they must release.

My concern is for newbies. They are thinking "XML documents" not
"cycles." The default should be safe but a little slow.

 Paul Prescod