Re: [Conglomerate-devel] Re: Questions about libxml2 and GnomeVFS support in libgsf

[Dave Malcolm <david davemalcolm demon co uk>]

On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 15:27, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 01:40:06AM +0000, Dave Malcolm wrote:
> > I've had a brief look at the files gsf-libxml.h and .c within libgsf
> >
> > So if I take a GnomeVFS URI, use gsf_input_gnomevfs_new_uri to create a
> > GsfInput from it, then use gsf_xml_parser_context to create a libxml2
> > SAX context, should it "just work"?
>
> Depends on how how you define 'work' (ya gotta love Clinton's legacy)
>
> Yes - its will definitely go off and do standard parsing sorts of
>       things _within_ that input
>
> No - It will not magicly add support for retrieving other documents
>       in related urls.
>
> > Many of the SAX hooks in gsf-libxml.c are NULL.
>
> I've planned to add support for entites, and possibly improve error
> handling, but neither are especially high priority.  Your needs in
> this area are likely to be significantly greater than ours.  Tell
> use what you'd like to do and we can add it.

Alternatively, should I submit patches to the Gnumeric list?  

Who is using the XML wrappers in libgsf, and what kinds of things are
they doing? (i.e. what am I likely to break?)

> > Also, libgsf seems to
> > have no concept of relative paths for me to use...
>
> I'm not clear on what you mean here.

What I mean is that if "book.xml" contains an entity declared as the
file "entities/chapter1.xml", then "entities/chapter1.xml" should be
sought in some path relative to the one that "book.xml" was loaded
from.  This was what didn't appear to be supported in the current libgsf
interface, as far as I could tell.

> > Also:  are Gnome Office apps required to use GnomeVFS? or libgsf?
>
> There are no hard and fast requirements at this point.  Gnumeric and
> Abi seem to be moving towards gsf as the main interface because it
> can handle gnome-vfs in addition to other formats directly.  I've
> also been tempted to look at a libcurl based backend for network
> operations.  That library seems actively maintained and quite
> portable.

I have a vague recollection of being told at GUADEC 1 and 2 that
everyone will be using GnomeVFS in their applications.  That appears to
no longer be the case :-)

In which case I think it's high time we ported Conglomerate away from
GnomeVFS.

Dave