[XML-SIG] What belongs in pyXML?

[Alan Kennedy]

Greetings All,

I just wanted to pose a question, to which everyone will 
probably have a different answer :-)

What belongs in pyXML?

I wasn't around when the python XML-SIG was formed (I've 
only been pythoneering for about 12 months now), but I've 
been watching XML since May 1997, and using it and XSLT 
since Summer 1998, and well remember the heady early days
when everything was new and exciting. I can imagine that 
the original remit for the python XML-SIG was to provide
good XML support in python.

How things have changed! Nowadays, XML really is 
everywhere, and there isn't a language in existence that 
doesn't have XML support. 

And Python has an embarrassment of riches in relation to 
XML. There is SAX and DOM support built into the standard 
distribution, including validating and non-validating 
parsers, pure python and native code parsers, SAX level 1 
and 2 support, etc, etc.

There are multiple independent libraries for DOM and XSLT, 
including 4Suite, Pirxx/Pyana and now libxml/libxslt, all 
of which are high-quality, standards-compliant and 
production-quality implementations.

And then there is the "exotic" support, such as RDF (4RDF, 
Redfoot), Schema, etc (pytrex, xsv).

And then there is the buzzing world of web services, where 
is at least half a dozen SOAP/XML-RPC implementations, and 
doubtless several WS?L implementations in the pipeline.

It appears (to me at least :-) that python really is *the* 
premier language for XML support.

So, against that background, I'd like to pose this question.

What is the *current* purpose of pyXML? 

I fairly sure I know what the purpose used to be. Has the 
purpose changed? Should it change?

Regards,

Alan.



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