[DotGNU]Portable.NET Status 7 Dec 2002

[Rhys Weatherley]

Hi all!

I've had my head buried inside System.Xml all week.  Achieving
ECMA-compatibility was not quite as easy as I thought, but I'm
getting there pretty quickly.  About 80% done now.

System.Xml is taking a little longer than I first budgeted because
I'm also building an extensive test suite alongside it.  This is
going to be our most-tested component by the time I'm done with it.
We're not going to get it wrong this time! :-)

Gopal has been applying patches from the community (thanks to
everyone for your help!), and fixing various bugs in the compiler
that I didn't know were there.  He and I have practically switched
roles lately, with him mostly working pnet and I working on pnetlib.
Great work Gopal - just don't forget to pass those exams!

Various bits and pieces from David Dawkins, Stephen Compall, Jeff
Post, Michael Moore, and James Michael DuPont (I'm still waiting
for those mingw32 Savannah patches so I can apply them James :-) ).

More System.Xml for me next week.  The compiler guys may want to look
into the "using" statement, as well as unsafe pointer handling.  I
was going to look into these, but I'm swamped with pnetlib right now.

System.IO, System.Net, and System.ComponentModel also need volunteers
inside pnetlib.  We're getting close.

Cheers,

Rhys.