[XML-SIG] Reconsidering the DOM API

[Uche Ogbuji]

> Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> > 
> > Just because I have to say it... 4XPath should work well with any DOM that
> > supports the binding (it actually only uses attribute access).  However, it
> > uses a C module and I understand those are harder to get sanctioned into the
> > Python distro.
> 
> Because it is so much C code, and has a pretty sophisticated API, and
> also depends on a bunch of Python code, I would rather wait until 1.7
> for that. But I think we should give it serious consideration for 1.7.
> Having full XPath would absolutely rock. Also, it doesn't just depend on
> C -- it also depends on Yacc, right?

True (it depends on Bison, actually).  But then again, so does Python.

> I'm not yet ready to accept that no Python-coded parser could parse
> XPath efficiently. I want to propose that it is impossible to Fredrick
> and see what happens in the next beta of SRE. :)

We do plan to try again with SRE.  Mike was pretty excited after talking to 
the Effbot (I think) at IPC8 and he thought SRE might be fast enough.  We'll 
see.  If /F beats us to it, tant mieux.

> http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath
> 
> Above and beyond XPath, I would like to believe that reasonably
> efficient parsers can be written in straight Python using SRE or at
> least MXTools or something...

Hmm...  regular expressions for XPath seems a bit sticky, but feasible, but 
full XML?...


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +01 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
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