XML and Python (with a minor rant about XSLT tools)
Uche Ogbuji has recently published an article on the The State of the Python-XML Art, 2003. The bulk of the article is a very useful list of all of the python software projects that involve XML processing.
The article reminds me of my recent unpleasant attempts to get a working XSLT processor installed on a python 2.3 installation on Mac OS X. Here's a run-down of the software I tried, and the results:
- Python bindings for libxml2 and libxslt. Couldn't get them to install on Mac OS X. The site offers binaries of the xml modules, but the python setup script couldn't find the right directories. I made a weak attempt to modify the install scripts, but bailed out when I realized it wasn't worth the time (and it was over my head).
- PyXML. XSLT isn't listed as one of its main features. It apparently uses a version of the 4Suite processor. The processor is referred to as "experimental" and users are encouraged to not install it if they want to use 4Suite. Well, I'd like to use 4Suite, but...
- 4Suite. Install fails on my Mac. It seems to be a problem with gcc. I'm not enough of a hacker to figure that one out. A post to the 4Suite mailing list went nowhere. Its too bad, as 4Suite has lots of other interesting things I'd like to play with...
I noticed that Uche's list included Pyana. I seem to think I might have looked at this once before, but I'll clearly need to give it another whirl. Or just break down and install all of this on my windows box.