At 16:23 03/02/04 +0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
Having solid libraries for XML and HTTP would be a jolly good thing. As you know, there is plenty of raw material around, but it obviously doesn't do what you want, yet.
I think I'm very close, based on the HXml Toolkit software and a few bits. I was parsing XML directly from the web earlier today, using Hugs on Win32.
If you, together with other interested parties, were to get together to do this, the rest of us would be very grateful. You could do that by directly working on the libraries distributed with GHC and Hugs (we could give you CVS access).
I'd like to see this become part of the standard libraries, when it becomes sufficiently stable and portable. I can't say how Uwe Schmidt feels about this.
Or you could make a separate project of it, and distribute the stuff separately, which would free you from the GHC and Hugs's release cycles.
If the new library infrastructure project takes off, that could be an attractive option. I assume that in due course, the hierarchical libraries would move into such a framework. My goal is to be able to write software that uses an XML library that is easy for people not experienced with Haskell to obtain and load into their running environment. #g ------------ Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact