[Tclxml-users] Re: tclDOM or TDOM dilemma on Windows

[Steve B. <Ste...@zv...>]

Fra...@ce... wrote:
> My problem is to chose between the tclDOM and the tDOM families of
> development for using it on Windows environment, without having to compile
> anything (sorry I do that as a hobby and I have no time to configure Linux
> nor even to play with a Visual C compiler - although it was my job several
> years ago ;-} ).
> 
> tclDOM family is now at version 2.5 but the version on  ActiveState is
> behind and didn't appear to work for my first little tests. However there is
> a lot of documentation available. TclXML2 parser seems to be linked to
> Gnome, which perhaps implies no plan for availability on Windows??? 

Not at all - late last year Andreas Kupries did some fine
work to make TclXML/expat, TclDOM/libxml2 and TclXSLT (libxslt)
part of ActiveTcl.  He has these building on all platforms supported
by ActiveTcl; Linux, Windows, Solaris and HP/UX.  Hence the
next release of ActiveTcl should have all of these packages
included for the Windows platform.  As to when that will become
available, well you'd have to ask him or Jeff Hobbs.

I'm also working with Jean-Claude Wippler to include these
packages in kitten, so that one can write a StarKit that
makes use of XML & XSLT.

> tDOM comes with a Windows DLL ready and although the syntax is different my
> first tests were successful. The documentation seems to be scarce.

My personal belief is that the two packages should have been merged
years ago, but my efforts to make that happen failed :-(

I'm certainly working on more documentation for TclXML, et al.
Also, my company (Zveno) has training material available for
these packages and it can also provide commercial support.

> What would be your recommendations? main functional and operational
> differences between the 2 approaches? availability plans for Windows?

At the Tcl scripting level both functionally and operationally
I don't think there's a big difference - trivially different syntax
but the basic functions of parsing, DOM and XSLT are supported
by both packages.

At the C level I believe TclXML, et al, is more advanced.
The TclXML family is fully TEA2 compliant, is Stubs enabled
and sports a layered architecture that allows extensions.

There's also the issue of support.  Many more developers use
libxml2 & libxslt, so it is better tested.  I have no
comparative usage numbers for TclDOM/TclXSLT vs tDOM,
but you can check for yourself on the SourceForge project
page.

As far as performance goes, tDOM may be slightly better in
some circumstances but compared to the performance of Java tools
the difference is trivial.

Finally, at least for TclXML & TclDOM there is a pure-Tcl
version for completely compilation-free deployment.
Alot of people find this very useful.

> Best Regards and many thanks to Steve Ball and Jochen Loewer for there
> respective big efforts.

No worries!

Cheers,
Steve Ball

-- 
Steve Ball            |   XSLT Standard Library   | Training & Seminars
Zveno Pty Ltd         |     Web Tcl Complete      |   XML XSL Schemas
http://www.zveno.com/ |      TclXML TclDOM        | Tcl, Web Development
Ste...@zv...  +---------------------------+---------------------
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