Re: NSXMLDocument

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 13 Feb 2009, at 15:29, Nicola Pero wrote:

> > > There's no reason why there can't be two implementations available  
> > > in base ... we already have two versions of NSXMLParser ... one  
> > > using libxml2 which is fairly strict about getting valid XML, the  
> > > other writing in pure objective-c and tolerant of the invalid XML  
> > > produced by some of the Apple tools.
>
> If Apple's own implementation is a wrapper around libxml2, how do  
> they manage to parse this invalid XML that their own tools  
> produce ? ;-)

Maybe they don't manage to parse their own stuff with it (just like we  
don't).  At FOSDEM, I think Marcus told me they use a special custom- 
written parser in 'C' for handling 'XML' property lists, and this  
would obviously allow them to accept illegal characters there.

Also, perhaps they really don't wrap libxml2 ... though the new API  
they provide looks *very* like the libxml2 feature set, and I've read  
on the web (though obviously that's not to be trusted) that they wrap  
libxml2.

> Maybe they set some permissive flags in libxml2 ?

I'm pretty certain that's not the case ... I looked long and hard for  
such an option (to permit characters like ESC, defined as illegal/ 
forbidden in the xml standards), and all I found was various threads  
saying that it was not and would not be done.  You can't put ESC in  
XML even using the &#NN; notation.