In mid-September, we reported that Nick Wellnhofer, the long-time maintainer of the widely used XML parsing library libxml2, planned to step down from the project. A few days ago, that change became official.
When looking at one of the latest commits in the project’s GitLab repository, you can now see the following notice:
“This project is unmaintained and has known security issues (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/346). It is foolish to use this software to process untrusted data.”
Out of curiosity, why do you consider XML unpleasant to work with?
Not the one you asked, but I don’t like XML compared to alternatives like JSON.
The main problem with XML is that it’s an unnecessarily complicated standard. There are often multiple ways to represent the same thing, each with their own gotchas and drawbacks.
JSON on the other hand has a much simpler standard. The entire JSON standard fits easily in one page. It’s also closer to how data is actually represented in memory. There’s often one ideal way to represent whatever you have in memory to a JSON file, and the reverse is also true.
Despite it’s simplicity, JSON covers most cases XML would cover. Often in a more elegant way.
If you like pain, then XML is the right choice for you.