Re: Problems with xml-parse-string

[Wojciech Meyer <wojciech.meyer@googlemail.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
>> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:11:40 +0200
>> 
>> Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:
>> 
>> > You are overselling your case.
>> 
>> I give up.
>
> That's a pity.
>
> Chong, I'd suggest trusting Lars's instincts and experience a bit
> more.  OTOH, if you indeed want to see valid technical arguments for
> his suggestion, you should request the same from the opposite views.
> We should either judge intuition against intuition or specific
> arguments vs specific arguments.  I saw no practical arguments to back
> up the other view, only academic ones.  That's unfair, IMO.

Saying, `I used Sxml with Lisp in a real project and I had no problems
with it at all' is enough? To emphasise, a real project, which means
working for food. How can be a better proof or technical reason. If i
wanted to transfer the data from Elisp equipped with Sxml, to the other
one, what would be the easiest way? `Prin1' obviously, and `read' at
other side, or in case of Lars format transforming back to XML and
re-parse and re-read (Which is not supported yet at all, BTW). How about
other maybe `less practical' languages like Mbase (the one I worked
on). Can I actually do the same with the Scheme: yes I could if the
format was Sxml.  There is no real reason behind having this format
beside:

+ it is portable
+ very well specified and robust
+ well known standard
+ will not surprise us with some nitpicks

For a Lars format
+ only Emacs would use that
+ we still don't know how to support all the stuff from Xml
+ nobody produced spec for it that we can actually believe it is OK to
transform from XML and to XML without losing information
+ some small problems with escaping `:' but that's regarding Sxml too
+ BTW: you cannot use `text' property to store content, as it can be used
as an attribute (just a trivial example).

So yes, that's the practical reasons again, to emphasise I don't mind
this one or other one (if anybody asked me really..), it would be just
wise to use something that is well specified and not reinventing the
wheel again.

Wojciech