Re: Re;: NSXMLParser on GS (was Re: Books / GNUStep / XML)

[Adrian Robert]

On Oct 18, 2004, at 3:49 AM, Dr. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> Dear all,
> we have a first (90%) implementation of NSXMLParser (and
> NSPropertyListSerialization based on NSXMLParser ) within the mySTEP
> fork. It is not required to link to libxml2 which improves the
> footprint for embedded use.

Hi,

I like the sound of this, but it also must be said that implementing a 
fully standards-compliant XML parser with good performance is not a 
minor task.  The use of libxml2 has the benefit that it is a mature 
implementation that receives lots of testing and dots/crosses all or 
most of the i's and t's in the specification.

I appreciate that the focus of myStep is different from GNUstep.  Is 
the goal of your project's NSXMLParser code to provide an XML 
implementation to this level, or is it intended more to be used in 
special cases, such as archive I/O, where the XML formats and needed 
behaviors are a controlled subset of the full range of possibilities?

If the latter, does your design make it possible to implement some type 
of runtime switching behavior so that libxml2 could be used (behind the 
same API) instead of the native implementation if needed?  Runtime 
parser selection is the norm in the Java world, and while it can cause 
inconvenience at times, it often comes in handy as well.