Using advogato (and my log), since I’m not on the Planet (yet).
I’ve just read Daniel’s post, and since shame is a powerful drive, here’s my non-requested answer.
I’m one guy – quite possibly, the only one – that switched from a full-fledged XML parser like libxml2 to GMarkup. Believe you me: I would have rather stayed within the blissfulness of DOM, within the ease of development of a complex and powerful parser, within the safety of one of the best XML parser around the F/OSS world.
I would have used libxml2 (and in fact, I did begin using it) – because of the work that DV (and every other developer involved) put into libxml2; I state that again: it’s a wonderful library, and it’s great to have it, and for it I’ll have to buy Daniel enough beer to knock him unconscious until Gnome 2.14. :-)
That said, I switched to GMarkup because libxml2 is also a heavy dependency for Gtk+. It’s a 1M+ library, and a dependency some devices can’t afford to have on the chain – I think specifically of embedded devices.
Supporting a platform standard like the storage for recent files and bookmarks only on desktop boxes, because they can afford to have libxml2 pre-installed is not an option.
I remember discussing on the XDG list with Daniel and others about the desktop-bookmark spec; the spec started as a GMarkup format, and then I was convinced to use XBEL. It was a good idea – and once properly standardised, it could lead to data sharing between various environments; a goal that the previous recent-files spec missed badly.
Having GMarkup to parse a valid XBEL stream, even with every limitation it has (UTF-8 only, a bit shaky XML:NS support, etc.), has been possible (even thinkable) just because I had beside my open Gedit window another window with a XBEL parser written using libxml2, reminding me how a full-fledged XML parser should work.
So: thanks Daniel for libxml2 – your great work has been and it’s still really appreciated and useful. Sadly, there are requirements, in this world, and many times they collide with what we would like.
In my humble opinion double works are bad as the resources are limited. Maybe libxml2 its to big to be the core of every application in gnome but maybe what was necesary is divide libxml2 in smaller parts and not make another XML parser. This is just an opinion of course. About the Daniel’s post its sad to see how a person that has contributed so much to a project feel that his work is not apreciated. But maybe Daniel must think how to improve the library to be more scalable and plugable instead of loss interest. The reality is that the developers needs a better solution than libxml2 for any reason and would be nice to see that libxml2 offer that solution and the XML parser of gnome its the same for every application.