Today has definitely been a good Perl day. We eventually sorted out the XML::SAX::Base bundling problem, by relying on what was originally a bug in the XML::SAX distro. Base.pm being autogenerated by the Makefile.PL, it wasn't being picked up by CPAN. So thanks to that, it can be distributed both with XML::SAX and separately, provided that the XML::SAX::Base distro has a pregenerated Base.pm (or a fake one). Kip Hampton did precisely that, and sent it to CPAN, wheee !
In addition, for a quick encore, Kip went ahead and committed PerlDOM to the SourceForge CVS so that we can now all work on that together. I haven't had time to delve into it, but it sure looks cool at first sight.
Right in Kip's wake, Ken MacLeod added in his draft of the PerlDOM spec. We'll now be able to sync it with the SAX2 spec so that the two become as interoperable as possible.
Also, perl-xml saw a flurry of modules updates. XML::Handler::Trees from Eric Bohlman, XML::Simple with bugfixes from Grant McLean, and XML::SAX::Simpler, a new version of Simple that groks SAX (if I understood correctly, I must say that I never used Simple).
And all in all, it seems that the whole SAX enchilada is getting the attention that I think it deserves -- SAX makes XML so much more easy to use. We even got some warm fuzzy kudos from a number of nice people :-)
Oh, and Matt made some AxKit patches as well. I haven't had time to follow those clearly, but it looks as if we're going to be able to ditch PerlHandler chains in favour of a new AxAddPlugin directive. That will certainly make a few people's lives easier (including mine).
Anyway... now there's more in the pipeline. Moving XML::SAX::Expat ahead (first into completion, then into XS), creating XML::SAX::SVG{Expand,Contract} to switch between the standard and expanded syntax for paths (a long requested feature of the svg-dev folks), a release of CSS::SAC to match the updates in CVS (which are numerous) accompanied by a few new patches and hopefully two new filters (including one that takes SAC in and SAX out to produce a nice XHTML display of a CSS file), and of course the accompanying SAC spec on which I'm working.
Also, Tessera is starting to shape out, now with some of it's most fundamental classes being fleshed out in code. I hope to have something to show soon enough.
I just hope that I didn't have to write these silly documents for those real work things (but then, it puts beer on the table) and that my coffee machine would stop segfaulting (well, I don't really now what it does, but it sure crashes). If you know someone that designs appliance OSs at Moulinex, please give me their name and I'll be happy to forward it to the closest Mafia padres.
It sounds like the latter; from there, it should be trivial to also emit an XSL-FO version, suitable for printing.
