[webkit-dev] Writing a new XML parser with no external libraries

[Alex Milowski]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Jeffrey Pfau <jpfau at apple.com> wrote:
> See responses inline:
>
> On Jun 28, 2011, at 6:26 PM, Adam Barth wrote:
>
>> A question and a comment:
>>
>> 1) Will this let us to remove the code for both the libxml2 and the
>> QtXml parsers?  I'd certainly much rather have one XML parser than
>> three.
>
> This won't replace libxslt or QtXmlPatterns for XSL-T, as they depend on the respective XML libraries. The goal for this XML parser is to be able to replace the core XML parser itself. XSL-T support would have to come later.
>
>> 2) One thing we found very helpful in working on the HTML parser was a
>> good test suite.  Presumably there are existing XML parsing test
>> suites.  You might consider landing one (or more) of these test suites
>> as a first step.
>>
>> Adam
>
> I know that W3C provides a test suite, but it's probably not that comprehensive. I can try to find more online; I'm sure that some of the open source projects like libxml2 provide some.

Actually, the XML test suite [1] is quite good and provides about 3058
tests (just checked).  It is maintained by the XML Core working group.
 If you find something insufficient, I suggest you contact them or
post on the mailing list for the test suite.

Having written an XML parser before, I'd be happy to help in your
endeavor.  I had started to look into this myself but got distracted
by other things.


[1] http://www.w3.org/XML/Test/

-- 
--Alex Milowski
"The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the
inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language
considered."

Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics