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README - PXP, the XML parser for O'Caml
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==============================================================================
Pre-release of PXP, the XML parser for O'Caml
==============================================================================

PXP is the new, completely revised and partly rewritten validating XML parser 
for O'Caml; the old name, "Markup", has been dropped. The current version of 
PXP is still a bit experimental because it is not fully tested; however, it is 
now stable enough to be used in experimental applications. 

PXP will retain most parts of Markup's API; the name PXP emphasizes the 
strengths of the API: it is the Polymorphic XML Parser. The document objects 
representing the parsed file have an interesting polymorphism which allows that 
the user of the parser can control which kind of objects are actually created. 
The current API supports the element type as criterion for object/class 
selection; future APIs will extend this concept such that arbitrary criterions 
are possible (e.g. you may want to have different classes for different 
namespaces). 

The current development goals of PXP are:

-  Full XML-1.0 conformance: The current pre-release is now very close to 
   strict XML-1.0 conformance. The only bigger difference to the standard is 
   that PXP sometimes accepts DTDs as legal while the standard forbids them 
   (non-deterministic content models).
   One of the more important improvements since 0.2.10 is the possibility to 
   represent XML documents internally as UTF-8 strings, not only as ISO-8859-1 
   strings. Thanks to Claudio Sacerdoti Coen who contributed a special lexer 
   preprocessor hiding the details of the UTF-8 encoding in the lexer 
   definitions. 
   
-  Correctness of validation: The well-formedness and valididity constraints 
   must be implemented as correct as possible. The last stable release had 
   already a regression test covering many aspects of XML. The test suite will 
   be extended.
   
-  Parsing performance: It should be possible to process large amounts of data 
   in a reasoable period of time. The last stable release had many stages of 
   processing that wasted time.
   The current pre-release is already 30 per cent faster than 0.2.10.
   
-  Simplicity of usage: Unlike parsers basing on imperative languages and DOM, 
   the usage of PXP should be simple, even for complex tasks. The current 
   parser API has already many advantages over DOM; especially it is well 
   integrated into the functional and object-oriented language O'Caml. You do 
   not have to deal with artificial representations like "node lists" while the 
   programming environment already provides good support for list structures. 
   The fact that O'Caml allows a functional programming style is interesting 
   for programs transforming XML trees.
   
==============================================================================
Download the PXP pre-release
==============================================================================

The current pre-release is available under 
http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/pxp-pre-0.99.8.tar.gz [1]. There is 
currently no documentation for this version of the software; it is recommended 
to use the Markup manual [2] and compare it with the current module interfaces.

Please note that this is work in progress; it may still contain bugs and 
irregularities.

The parser works only with OCaml-3. The parser needs the netstring package [3], 
at least version 0.9.1. 

I am very interested in your opinion to PXP; please contact me [4].

==============================================================================
Author, Credits, Copying
==============================================================================

PXP has been written by Gerd Stolpmann [5]; it contains contributions by 
Claudio Sacerdoti Coen. You may copy it as you like, you may use it even for 
commercial purposes as long as the license conditions are respected, see the 
file LICENSE coming with the distribution. It allows almost everything. 

==============================================================================
Where to find the stable release
==============================================================================

Here. [6]


--------------------------

[1]   see http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/pxp-pre-0.99.8.tar.gz

[2]   see http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/documentation/markup/manual

[3]   see http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/documentation/netstring

[4]   see mailto:gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de

[5]   see mailto:gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de

[6]   see http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/documentation/markup