begin quoting boblq as of Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 10:04:21PM -0700: [snip] > Odd, they are probably the most common XML parsers around. > Strange if you are using/complaining about XML parsers that > you would not have at least looked at them.
Xerxes is the most common, surely. At least, that's what I see everywhere. Most I use whatever the project I'm on is using. [snip] > Maybe your contributions would be better focused on something > other than reformatting and spell checking. That's not the contribution, that's what I do before I can stand looking at the source. It's like trying to contribute to a story when the draft you're handed is written in crayon at a fourth-grade level -- typing up the story so far is a necessary first step. It generally doesn't take too long to fix up the formatting -- I do it more or less automatically as I look at the code. (Except for #ifdef-hell C code -- I don't even bother pretending that it's worthwhile playing in *that* cesspit.) > > After a few times, it just isn't worth the effort anymore. > > Come on Stewart. Give me a break. Can you really not > contribute without first reformatting everything? I won't _look_ at code unless it's decently formatted. Why should I bother? If you want someone to contribute to your project, the onus is on /you/ to encourage that. > > Poking at 'em for a bit looks interesting, until I hit a sourceforge > > bug (in a .py script). Oh, well, so much for that. > > You sure are an easy fellow to discourage. There are more interesting things to do in the world than to put up with someone else's incompetence. You preach from that soapbox often enough! After all, it's a more productive use of my time to go mow my lawn than to put up with messing about on a computer because someone else can't be bothered to test their changes. And that's with your opinion of mowing the lawn. > > Often, good error reporting isn't something that can be bolted on to a > > system afterwards. > > How do you know about these when you have not looked at them ... It's a /general/ assertion. I've never worked on a project that had decent bolted-on-after-the-fact error reporting. People talk about parsing being hard -- it isn't, compared to good error reporting. > often? Maybe just once you should look at the code instead of > blindly citing your prejudices. I often do. Generally, the code sucks. A disproportionate number of open-source programmers have no pride in what they write. > Too much to ask I guess. It's like asking you to write maintainable code. You're a fine one to talk about "too much to ask". Andrew may be right ... I should go look at the BSD camp. They apparently have standards. -Stewart -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
