【文件属性】:
文件名称:Python & XML - XML Processing with Python, First Edition (2002).pdf
文件大小:3.5MB
文件格式:PDF
更新时间:2022-09-07 12:47:11
Python XML Processing
Preface
This book comes to you as a result of the collaboration of two authors who became
interested in the topic in very different ways. Hopefully our motivations will help you
understand what we each bring to the book, and perhaps prove to be at least a little
entertaining as well.
Chris Jones started using XML several years ago, and began using Python more recently.
As a consultant for major companies in the Seattle area, he first used XML as the core
data format for web site content in a home-grown publishing system in 1997. But he
really became an XML devotee when developing an open source engine, which
eventually became the key technology for Planet 7 Technologies. As a consultant, he
continues to use XML on an almost daily basis for everything from configuration files to
document formats.
Chris began dabbling in Python because he thought it was a clean, object-oriented
alternative to Perl. A long-time Unix user (but one who frequently finds himself working
with Windows in Seattle), he has grown accustomed to scripting languages that place the
full Unix API in the hands of developers. Having used far too much Java and ASP in web
development over the years, he found Python a refreshing way to keep object-orientation
while still accessing Unix sockets and threads—all with the convenience of a scripting
language.
The combination of Python and XML brings great power to the developer. While XML is
a potent technology, it requires the programmer to use objects, interfaces, and strings.
Python does so as well, and therefore provides an excellent playpen for XML
development. The number of XML tools for Python is growing all the time, and Chris
can produce an XML solution in far less time using Python than he can with Java or C++.
Of course, the cross-platform nature of Python keeps our work consistently usable
whether we're developing on Windows, Linux, or a Unix variant—the combination of
which we both seem to find powerful.
Fred Drake came to Python and XML from a different avenue, arriving at Python before
XML. He discovered Python while in graduate school experimenting with a number of
programming languages. After recognizing Python as an excellent language for rapid
development, he convinced his advisors that he should be able to write his masters
project using Python. In the course of developing the project, he became increasingly
interested in the Python community. He then made his first contributions to the Python
standard library, and in so doing became noticed by a group of Python programmers
working on distributed systems projects at the research organization of CNRI. The group
was led by Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python. Fred joined the team and learned
more about distributed systems and gluing systems together than he ever expected
possible, and he loved it.
While still in graduate school, Fred argued that Python's documentation should be
converted to a more structured language called SGML. After a few years at CNRI, he
began to do just that, and was able to sink his teeth into the documentation more
vigorously. The SGML migration path eventually changed to an XML migration path as
XML acceptance grew. Though that goal has not yet been achieved (he is still working on
it), Fred has substantially changed the way the documentation is maintained, and it now
represents one of the most structured applications of the typesetting and document
markup system developed by Donald Knuth and Leslie Lamport.
Over time, the team from CNRI became increasingly focused on the development of
Python, and moved on to form PythonLabs. Fred remained active in XML initiatives
around Python and pushed to add XML support to the standard library. Once this was
achieved, he returned to the task of migrating the Python documentation to XML, and
hopes to complete this project soon.