[XML-SIG] Choice of XML packages

[Derek Fountain]

> Fourthought's DOM, XPath, XSLT, RDF and ODS implementations were all
> open-source add-ons to PyXML.

OK, thanks for the information. All this certainly makes for a much more 
convincing XML story than Perl or Tcl seem to be currently offering. PyXML 
now say the 4DOM DOM implementation is up to DOM Level 2 specification. Great 
stuff!

> Fourthought's XPath and XSLT code was based on extensions to PyXML's
> minidom, and at one point was incorporated into PyXML as xml.xpath and
> xml.xslt. However, major API changes and the emergence of Fourthought's
> C-based, XPath-optimized "Domlette" resulted in the rapid obsolescence of
> this code, and the decreasing interest in undertaking the
> ever-more-daunting task of bringing it up-to-date.

This is the bit I'm still not quite clear on. PyXML still carries xml.xslt and 
xml.xpath, which, you say, are obsolete. Fine. So, if I want to work with 
XPATH and XSLT (which I do, especially XPATH) what are my choices?

One option seems to be to use the obsolete code, which doesn't sound like a 
particularly good idea, except for the fact that most Linux distros ship with 
PyXML. At least my code would work easily on the user's machine.

The other, technically superior option, is to use the latest 4Suite code, but 
this means my users need to install a package which the Linux distros don't 
seem to carry (unless things have changed in this respect in the last round 
of distro updates). I'm also a bit nervous of this "install PyXML with the 
--without-xpath and --without-xslt options" thing, which I suspect most Linux 
distros aren't going to do. I'm pretty sure my SuSE-8.1 didn't use those 
switches, so I'm wondering what the impact is of installing 4Suite on this 
box - or any of my almost-randomly-configured user's boxen.

>From what I've read, things appear to be in a bit of a limbo state regarding 
xpath and xslt, and I'm not quite sure which way to move forward here.

-- 
> eatapple
core dump