Re: dxml 0.2.0 released

[Chris via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 14:04:38 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
On Monday, February 12, 2018 12:38:51 Chris via 
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 05:36:51 UTC, Jonathan M Davis


However, std.xml does not support the DTD section, and glancing 
over it, it doesn't look like it even handles skipping the DTD 
section properly (it doesn't handle the fact that '>' can 
appear within quoted sections within the DTD). So, dxml is not 
worse than std.xml in that regard, and we wouldn't lose any 
functionality by having dxml replace std.xml. It just wouldn't 
necessarily do as much as some folks might like.

I thought the same when I glanced over std.xml. There's no DTD 
support there either and I don't think it would be a deal breaker 
for most users.

My guess is that DTD support won't be a deal breaker given that 
std.xml doesn't support it, that std.xml has needed to be 
replaced for years now, and that no one else is working on 
replacing it, but I don't know. Disagreements over what should 
be done with std.json's replacement has meant that it has never 
been replaced even though significant work was done towards 
replacing it, so unfortunately, there's already precedence for 
a module not being replaced with something better due to 
disagreements over what the replacement would ideally be. So, I 
don't know.

- Jonathan M Davis

Wasn't there a replacement module that never got past the initial 
review steps? Some GSoC thing or so. But I wonder if that module 
would be up to the latest D standards.

While one may argue that DTD support is important, I would rather 
have something fast and simple like dxml that covers, say, 90% of 
the cases than nothing. It doesn't make sense to me that we 
should accept the current situation, only because of some 
bikeshedding that concerns 10% of the use cases. After all, it's 
only a module not a fundamental decision that concerns the 
direction D will take in the future. I think stuff like that can 
seriously turn off potential users. A lot of useful things begin 
with one person deciding to give it a go. vibe.d, dub, DScanner 
and DlangUI, for example. If the creators had started 
bikeshedding before writing the first line of code, there would 
still be a flamewar about the best way to go about it - and 
nothing would have happened.