Re: Problems with xml-parse-string

[Chong Yidong]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> > You are overselling your case.
>>
>> I give up.
>
> That's a pity.
>
> Chong, I'd suggest trusting Lars's instincts and experience a bit
> more.  OTOH, if you indeed want to see valid technical arguments for
> his suggestion, you should request the same from the opposite views.
> We should either judge intuition against intuition or specific
> arguments vs specific arguments.  I saw no practical arguments to back
> up the other view, only academic ones.  That's unfair, IMO.

Well, I'm sorry if this is unfair, but in such a situation---there are
numerous third-party packages requiring xml.el; a cursory search on
emacswiki showing five or six---the onus of proof is on the proponent of
the compatibility-breaking change.  I've looked at the three formats,
and the examples given; and maybe I'm just being dense, but I just don't
see sufficient advantage.

I'm open to adding a flag to the parse functions that toggles between
the old xml.el format and a new format; but the trouble is that if we're
going to offer a new alternative format, it becomes hard to justify
making that new format yet another non-standard one (Lars'), rather than
something other people are already using (sxml).  That's why I think
it's better to work on improving the accessor functions instead.