[XML-SIG] Python 1.6 and XML

[THOMAS PASSIN]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote, about keeping xmllib or not -
>
> * Paul Prescod
> |
> | I vote to dump xml.parsers.xmllib because I don't think anybody has
> | the interest to maintain and improve it.
>
> Should we check that with Sjoerd before we dump it?
>
> | Arguably, namespaces and xmllib don't play together nicely anyhow
> | because of the function name/":"-character clash.
>
> The elements dictionary fixes that, and in fact the current xmllib
> version supports namespaces.

xmllib is the easiest, quickest way to get started processing xml in Python.
The learning curve is small.  This makes it valuable to have in the package.
When I first started with Python and xml, sgmlop didn't work because of a
version mismatch, and pyexpat wouldn't run because it couldn't find its
dynamic modules (this is WIndows95).  But xmllib worked like a champ.  Its
existence also helped  me to understand how much you could do easily with
Python, because it didn't use a bit of C code, only Python.

I think other newcomers would also find it to be a good thing.
Let's keep xmllib.

BTW, there seem to be at least two versions of urllib floating around, and
one of them doesn't handle file: urls correctly when the path to the file
includes the drive spec (as in c:\xml\file1.xml).  This is because it keeps
looking for a ':' after finding the one in "file:".  Does anyone know
whether this applies to the version currently packaged with the 1.5.2
distribution?

Tom Passin