From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: James Clark Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: emacs and libxml2 (for emacs w3) Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 12:31:12 +0700 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <3F727DA0.4010208@jclark.com> References: <87oexex7iv.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> <87y8wfwys0.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> <3F717C86.7030600@jclark.com> <87ad8uughn.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1064468078 18283 80.91.224.253 (25 Sep 2003 05:34:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 05:34:38 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Thu Sep 25 07:34:36 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1A2Olw-0006TW-00 for ; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 07:34:36 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1A2Osy-0001CS-00 for ; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 07:41:52 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.22) id 1A2Olh-0000Mu-J1 for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 01:34:21 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.22) id 1A2OlE-0000MK-5r for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 01:33:52 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.22) id 1A2OlA-0000Jc-D8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 01:33:50 -0400 Original-Received: from [203.130.150.186] (helo=server.bkk.thaiopensource.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.22) id 1A2Ol9-0000HX-5Y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 01:33:47 -0400 Original-Received: from jclark.com ([203.130.150.187]) by server.bkk.thaiopensource.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h8P5XhY21342 for ; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 12:33:43 +0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Original-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org In-Reply-To: <87ad8uughn.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:16613 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:16613 Nic Ferrier wrote: > The attraction (to me) of libxml2 is that I use it elsewhere. I know > what it does. When I'm developing xml based tools within emacs, using > a parser and xpath evaluator that I will use in production has value > for me. That doesn't seem like a good reason for the standard version of Emacs to link with libxml2. The whole point of XML is to be interoperable and not tie you to specific tools. I don't think one can assume that all Emacs users will be using libxml2 for XML processing. Can you give examples of applications that require linking to libxml2 rather than using libxml2 via separate programs? One approach that might be worth considering is writing a little C program on top of libxml2 that outputs an XML document in the form of the printed representation of the list structure defined in xml.el and vice-versa. Then you could do efficient XML processing in Emacs based on libxml2 without requiring Emacs to be linked to another library. I've been talking with the xml.el maintainer about how to extend this to handle namespaces, which are really essential for many apps these days. James