Re: XInclude vs SAX vs validation

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 21 Aug 2001 17:21:57 -0400, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>   The implementation time and processing cost has been pointed out
> quite a few time, I think the former is a question of getting the
> right toolkit, if you have XPath implementing XPointer is not very
> hard (took me too weeks part time).

While I'm delighted that there _is_ an XPointer implementation, and
thank you for writing it, I really wish you'd stop claiming that
"implementing XPointer is not very hard". 

If it's so easy, why is genuine XPointer support such a rare creature?

I've implemented the (braindead simple) child sequence portion of it,
and I'm working on improving my support for IDs in that mix, but I can't
say that I find (or that many other people find) that "implementing
XPointer is not very hard."  I'm certainly not a programming wizard, but
I don't think I'm also in finding that implementing XPointer (as it
currently stands) is in fact quite difficult.

Sadly, claims like this have a direct impact on the kind of XPointer
spec we're like to see emerge from the W3C.  The nature of that spec is
going to have a direct impact on the usefulness of XLink and XInclude,
and I can't say the future looks particularly bright.

Simon St.Laurent