On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 20:53, James Britt (rubydev) wrote:
> > The DOM is a pretty awkward API to both use and implement.  An API based on
> > Ruby-isms, such as dynamic typing and blocks for traversal, and XPath for
> > lookups would be much more convenient.
> 
> 
> While this is true, people coming to Ruby with prior XML experience will likley expect a DOM API, plus whatever else Ruby offers.

I don't know about that.  I came to Ruby in February, thinking that it
looked like a great language for dealing with markup.

A variety of issues - especially Unicode support - drove me back to
Java, where I'm merrily creating my own API for working with XML.  The
DOM itself is hardly my favorite API.  I'd have been a lot happier with
Ruby if it had a friendly API for manipulating XML, DOM or not.

To see where I'm going in Java (not that its details should influence
you, by any means), see http://moe.sourceforge.net.  It's a lot
Java-friendlier, IMHO, than the DOM, and I'd argue strongly in favor of
something Ruby friendly than something DOM-like for Ruby.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent, Author
XML: A Primer, 3rd Edition  - XML Elements of Style
Building XML Applications - Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Programming Web Services with XML-RPC
http://simonstl.com