Sharad said:
Don't want to sound cheeky, cocky or start a flame war but seems like
you think you are expert enough to judge other people. I personally
think one should refrain from it unless you like to argue much.
It is not a question of being an expert or not. I happen to sit at the
committee meetings (I say at and not in/on because I am an observer only) so
I can tell you: It seems so that it is not going to happen that you get XML
support into ISO C++ itself. However, since XML *is* a standard and C++ has
a standard there is no problem in creating a sort of binding. But - I am
afraid - that first such library has to be made, I do not think that an XML
library entirely designed by a committee would make you any happier than the
existing ones.
Most of the projects I have worked on have required XML somewhere or
the other. You need to resort to 3rd party libraries like
Xerces/MSXML etc and their intricacies each time you switch to a new
library.
Wouldn't be good if there was a standard way to write the code and it
would have been portable too.
Then again, if you so much want XML support into C++ and work out one! The
point is, what some people cannot always get, that C++ is standardized in
these committee meetings. It is not a visionary shop as such. While with
C++ it has some of the latter, it is still a place where users of the
language and vendors of the language related tools gather together to
standardize existing practice. So if you want an XML library, you will need
to propose one.
I know writing programs involving threads in a standard way is
tricky, owing to OS differences.
Yeah. You know where is it the most trickier? On those OSes/platforms,
where there is no threading and it does not make sense either.
But now that most of the major projects require threads somewhere or
the other and then you include #ifdefs for your platform in your code
because your product runs on various platforms.
We make a quite large threaded application. Handling video calls and other
kind of magic. You cannot find *one* ifdef in the code due to threading.
Wouldn't it be good
to just provide a standard way of making the calls and let the
compiler decide what to do under the hood?
It is called POSIX threads.
Though I agree with you that the minimalist approach has made C and
C++ to be easily portable across platforms and extending the library
would require more work to be done by our compiler vendors. I have
been reading about the possibilities of library getting extended for
quite some time and just voiced what I felt would make life of a
developer to concentrate more on standard ways rather than deal with
3rd party or OS intricacies.
While these might be all well true and frustrating for you, none of the
above matters in my work. This is no attack.
Simply you have to
understand that the standardization process is not a restaurant, where you
order, and the waiter brings you a standard XML library, or C++ threading.
So if you need these, you need to either make proposals yourself (preferably
with a working, existing practice behind) or start kicking your
compiler/library vendors to come up with one and standardize it.
And I have to agree with Claudio, that you have a rather naive view of this
process. Which I had as well, before people put me to my place.
You
seem to think that there is the committee, all mighty, and what he says
shall happen, and him and only him governs the future of C++ and what the
vendors will actually implement. It is quite the other way around. The
committee is mainly made from those guyss writing compilers. So they decide
what will be made. And they decide based on both technical data and
customer demand. So you need to demand XML and threading from the guys
providing you with the C++ compiler and library. Or come up with a
solution. I guess the former is easier.