RE: XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable preferences library

[Richard S. <Ric...@ei...>]

> > Currently no parsers implement the entire set of standards as=20
> > they are still being written.=20
> So ? msxml is pretty fully featured for what we were discussing.

The point only is that XML is still an evolving standard, which is
something to be aware of when choosing tools.

> > a much faster uptake time of standards additions. MS have a habit of
> > adding unecessary proprietry extensions to their implementations of
> > standards which locks you in to their implementation.
> How is that valid ? That's the same opengl/directx linux/windows type
> argument. In what way is it related or productive to the discussion ?

It was one of the reasons we chose not to use MSXML. Many people have
experienced long term problems using MS implementations of standards
with MS proprietry additions (cf HTML). In planning for the long
term, it is a consideration.

> I prefer msxml mainly because everyone with IE6 on their=20
> machine has it, less to download. And Xerces (admittedly I haven't=20
> tried it in 2 years) had an awful interface and terrible =
documentation.=20
> I prefer expat if you want open source.

XercesC did seem to do everything we wanted directly our of the box =
(well,
zip file anyway). The documentation was good enough for us to start =
using it
immediately. This may well have changed since 2 years ago. One important
factor was that it was one of very few parsers which could do full
validation using XMLSchema. ExPat does not currently support schemas,
MSXML 4.0 does.

> > The smallest I know is mine which is the release time parser (debug
> > parser is fully validating XercesC) and it's a single class and
> > fills maybe 2 code pages (not including documentation, 1280*1024
> > resolution, full size MSVC editor window). XML really is that easy
> > to write straight parsers for.
> Well as yours isn't downloadable and CMarkup is, I'll stick=20
> with CMarkup.

Aye, my point only was that off-the-shelf parsers and optimisations
aside, you can always write your own pretty damn quickly (XML being
designed to be easily machine parseable) and use your own optimisations
(especially using string pools or other string related efficiencies).

Rich