Re: Recent updates to I/O package xmlread API leave Matlab/Octave incompatible

[PhilipNienhuis]

Please report issues with octave-forge packages to the octave-forge mailing
list:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev

OK:


Pablo Mayrgundter wrote
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> First off, thanks for doing Octave dev work!  I just came across what I
> think is a recent Octave/Matlab incompatibility that I wanted to notify
> you about.
> 
> I just grabbed the io package from octave-forge and tried to use it to
> load some OSM data using the OSM Fuctions Matlab package:
> 
>  
> http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/35819-openstreetmap-functions
> 
> But it failed, as the xmlread function in the current octave-forge package
> only loads a custom format XML that defines internal octave datatypes. 
> This looks to be a recent update by carandraug:
> 
>  
> http://octave.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/octave/trunk/octave-forge/main/io/src/xmltree_read.l?revision=10145&view=markup
> 
> (search for "Bad declaration" to see that it's expecting an octave.dtd
> declaration, and will fail on generic XML)
> 
> Matlab's xmlread function, on the other hand, works for abritrary XML, by
> returning a DOM tree:
> 
>   http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/xmlread.html
> 
> Is this API divergence intentional?  It seems to me Octave's xmlread
> should behave like Matlab's, and the custom octave-xml code that's in
> there now should be moved to different naming, like octaveXmlRead or
> something.
> 

Recently xmlread and xmlwrite have been moved from the miscellaneous pkg
into the io pkg as io is a more logical home for them, but this move has
little to do with a regression of "ML compatibility".
AFAIK the issue actually is that xmlread & xmlwrite are essentially as
unmaintained as they have always been :-(  
Sorry for that.

I've looked at them two years ago to see if they might be used for ODS I/O,
but it turned out they lacked even the most basic internal documentation. I
couldn't even discern how they were to be used in practice, despite the
suggestive texinfo help text. 
But perhaps this is easily mended.

Could you fix them, please?

Philip


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