Re: XML for Packages.gz

[Bart Schuller <schuller@lunatech.com>]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 03:57:40PM +0200, Toni wrote:
> Everybody could parse the huge "Packages.gz" quite easily, either
> from C, C++, Java, Perl, Guile, gnome-xml, etc.

The one language that would actually be useful is XSLT. It could be
handy to make custom webpages that answer questions like "which packages
depend on package xxx?" using simple XPATH expressions.

However:

>     <pkg-ref refs='whiptail | dialog | gnome-utils' />

This still needs to be parsed if you want to match it using XPATH
expression.

>     <pkg-ref refs='apt (&lt;&lt; 0.3.12.1)' />

That goes double for the versioning. You've left all the parsing to the
application.

Then of course there's the fact that there are already libraries that do
the low level parsing, that can easily be bound to different (scripting)
languages.

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