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Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 07:51:20 +0200
To: Sterling Hughes <sterling@bumblebury.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] bundling libxml2
From: maxim@php.net (Maxim Maletsky)


On 27 Jun 2003 12:25:39 -0400
Sterling Hughes <sterling@bumblebury.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> So I figure I'll restart this discussion.  There are a couple of reasons
> I want to bundle libxml2:
> 
> 1) XML support is crucial.  You may not like XML, but its the standard
> for data exchange these days, and is incredibly important when
> interoperating with external services.  A PHP installation should simply
> not exist without XML support, if it does, then imho we've done
> something wrong.  Applications that are distributed need to rely on
> certain features in PHP, XML is one such feature.  I think this much has
> already been agreed upon.
> 
> 2) Libxml2 may be installed everywhere, but the version we rely upon
> isn't available everywhere.  As witnessed by a message to the list by
> michael, and a problem that someone else had over IRC.  Its fine to
> allow people to use external versions of libxml2, however, we need a
> recent version to operate.  For example, schema support is pretty
> essential, as its becoming the new DTD format for XML (and is required
> for proper SOAP support).
> 
> Its further helpful that users can rely on a certain implementation of
> libxml2 distributed with a certain version of PHP.
> 
> Anyhow, I thought I'd again bring this up before the beta.  What do
> people think?


I am +1 on bundling libxml2.

I think Sterling is right - PHP should have a decent XML support "by
default". XML is truly used a lot around the web development today, and
I think PHP needs a better competitiveness to other languages, XML-wise. 


--
Maxim Maletsky
maxim@php.net