Re: [xml] libxml2 API crazy?

[Nikita Churaev <lamefun x0r gmail com>]

> I bet nobody would complain about documentation!

Normal people who value their time will. XML is the official data format
of planet Earth. Every programming platform must have a decent,
well-documented XML API if it is to survive.

> I should point out that in practice the casting is not an issue even
> if you are technically correct.  My C textbook says that one cannot
> depend on the order of execution for "if" statements.  

I think they've made it standard:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/628526/is-short-circuiting-boolean-operators-mandated-in-c-c-and-evaluation-order

> And I understand about the structure padding argument -- in your
> example (two ints) they would certainly pad exactly the same in the
> real world or the real world would end as we know it.  In fact the
> same type should always align the same.  If you mixed double and float
> that is another story, they are often different.

Someone on this list said they've made it standard too.

> On the other hand -- it never hurts to do it right.  If you wanted to
> fix all the "if" statements that would be fine too :-)

The problem is not portability, people said all things that libxml2 uses
are standard, but lack of docs: without reading the libxml2 code, you
can't know what element types XML_ELEMENT_NODE, XML_TEXT_NODE structures
(xmlDoc, xmlNode, xmlAttr) correspond to, etc. There are lots upon lots
of quirks with xmlNodePtr:

https://github.com/lamefun/libxml2/blob/efd3b16f974d64e3dde05228a1ed9a70c9b4421e/include/libxml/tree.h#L580