Re: Problems with xml-parse-string

[Chong Yidong]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden> writes:

> Chong Yidong <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> So either the new libxml functions have to provide the same format as
>> xml.el, or xml.el has to be changed to used the new format, breaking
>> existing uses.  I am amenable to the latter if the new format is so much
>> better than the old one that it's worth dealing with the backward
>> compatibility headaches.
>
> I'd volunteer for changing the callers to use the new format if you
> change xml.el to do the same.

First let me clarify a technical detail.  In your new format,

 (catalog
   (text . "\n   ")
   (book
     (:type . "manual")
     (text . "\n      ")
     (title
       (text . "GNU Emacs manual"))
     (text . "\n   "))
   (text . "\n"))

seems to assume that element names never start with the colon character.
That is, there can never be an element named ":type".

The XML spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/) seems to
indicate that element names are allowed to start with a colon; see the
definition of NameStartChar in section 2.3.

It looks like the new format would give ambiguous results in that case.