Vote: deprecate std.xml?

[berni44]

On Saturday, 11 January 2020 at 17:16:00 UTC, Ernesto Castellotti 
wrote:
> What you say is certainly true, but how a removal without a 
> replacement can improve the STD?

In my oppinion there are several reasons:

a) Maintaining: Currently I've got the feeling, that we have 
rather too few people who maintain Phobos (and even when I file 
several bug fixes, I notice that there are also only limited 
resources on the side of the reviewers...). The number of 
bugreports has been increasing for years. Every package in the 
library adds to the amount of maintainance needed. So it would be 
wise to reduce the ballast.

b) Public perception: If the library contains problematic 
modules, people might judge that the whole library and with it 
the whole language is bad.

c) Eventually mobilizing powers: With the removal, the pressure 
to get a replacement, might increase. The plan to replace it has 
been there for 10 years now, as I can read, and it wasn't put 
into effect. If an xml module is really needed, someone might 
take this removal as a signal to improve one of the existing 
replacements or write something better, which might eventally 
make it into Phobos. And if this doesn't happen, it's probably 
not needed enough.

Having said this, of course a replacement would be fine for me 
too, but I don't see any yet nor in the near future.