[reportlab-users] Expat (Was: Help resolving ReportLab test errors)

[Dinu Gherman]

I wrote:
>
> As I recently found out in some sad conversation with the XML-SIG,
> and as I told Andy, Python 2.x does not include sources for Expat,
> which means standard Python XML support is pretty much useless
> unless you have previously installed Expat yourself. On Windose
> this is part of the Python 2.x binary distribution (which seems
> having caused some confusion in my head about its general availa-
> bility).
>
> I've been told that XML-SIG gurus have been finally able to con-
> vince the Python gurus to include expat sources from 2.3 on!
>
> This is the kind of problem I would have been glad to see being
> avoided, but it is there. Maybe the PBF can help prevent such
> things in the future? I don't know...

I forgot mentioning the good news! ;-) Expat is not needed any-
where in reportlab, not even in renderSVG! It's only indirectly
used in the test suite. I can easily make these warnings disappear
in case there is no such default XML parser installed.

For my svglib this is an entirely different story, of course...

Dinu

PS: I should also add, that I probably was a bit too harsh
     labeling above Python's XML support as "pretty much use-
     less" without a default expat parser.