[Haskell-cafe] XML parser recommendation?

[Malcolm Wallace]

"Yitzchak Gale" <gale at sefer.org> wrote:

> Another question about HaXML and HXT -
> what is the level of XML spec. compliance?

In HaXml, I certainly tried pretty hard to match the (draft) XML 1.0
spec, since the library was originally developed for a commercial
entity.  But that was back in 1999, and the spec has changed a little
since then.  You're right that it is a difficult target to hit though.
The spec is unnecessarily complex.

The major area of non-compliance in HaXml is that it doesn't do anything
with input encodings.  That is partly a limitation of Haskell
implementations themselves, which have only recently gained libraries
for the purpose.

Otherwise, Dimitry Astapov has recently been sending me patches to fix
some minor compliance problems, along with the QuickCheck properties
that discovered them.  His additions will appear probably in the next
release of HaXml.

Let me emphasise that these non-compliances are very minor.  Larger
issues that remain open do not fall into the compliance spectrum, but
are more about useability in practice.  For instance: effective support
for external catalogs of references; techniques to handle XML namespaces
in a sensible fashion, etc.

Regards,
    Malcolm