dxml 0.2.0 released

[Chris]

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.