Hi Hans,
First of all my thank you for your quick reply, it seems that we both are awake at odd hours ;)
2010/5/23 Hans Hübner hans.huebner@gmail.com:
Hi Frederico,
the XML import/export functionality has long regressed because it is unused, and I can't easily resurrect it.
I see, I sort of suspected that that might be a possibility, hence my initial message. It's quite natural for some "code rot" to settle in in areas that aren't used.
I never used the import aspect of the XML impex facility and at some point switched to writing specialized exporters for those formats that I need (i.e. http://bknr.net/trac/browser/trunk/projects/bos/m2/export.lisp#L94).
Right, I'm not familiar with cxml (well, I'm barely familiar with Lisp) but I understand the general idea.
I'm sorry that the documentation and source code still gives the misleading impression that there is an XML import/export facility. I'm going to make a little update to indicate the state of this subsystem.
No problem at all, documentation in general lags a bit when code changes frequently.
Did you have specific requirements for the impex facility?
That's a good question actually... at this stage I do not have any specific requirements. Without burdening you with details which aren't of interest this is merely a "pet project", an idea that I had about a strategy game, and which I'm using as a way to actually use Lisp a bit more. As such I'm still in the early stages and do not have specific requirements, or at least they are so vague that they are bound to change drastically. I'm not a big fan of XML, although in recent times I've came to at least recognise that it is useful as a way to exchange data, and with templating adapting it to different output forms. With that in mind the XML impex in the bknr documentation appeared as something that could be useful, but I can also use something else (like specialised importers/exporters, as you said).
I have a more general question though, which I hope you don't mind me asking: in general terms do you have plans to maintain the bknr datastore (I didn't yet investigate the web part of it, which I understand is done mainly by reading the code), or is it something that you see has having served its purpose? I'm only asking because it's quite natural for developers to reach a point where they change focus, even in terms of the language they use, let alone specific frameworks. I've actually learned quite a bit by reading the bknr documentation, and even listening to the audio of the 2008 Lisp conference that you gave, so in several ways bknr has already been quite useful to me, and I can only thank you in making it available. Since I'm on the very early stages of my project this is relatively important to me (relatively because this is not something that I do professionally, unlike you, and as such not even guaranteed to be finished).
Best regards,
Frederico