xmerl and fetching docs from the net

[Bertil Karlsson]

Johan Blom wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Ulf Wiger wrote:
> 
>>
>> I browsed through the OTP manual for xmerl, and got stuck
>> on one detail in the introduction to the User's Guide:
> 
> I must admit I have not yet...
> 
>>
>> "There are two known shortcomings in xmerl:
>>
>> - It cannot retrieve external entities on the Internet by
>>   a URL reference, only resources in the local file system.
>> - xmerl can parse Unicode encoded data. But, it fails on tag
>>   names, attribute names and other markup names that are
>>   encoded Unicode characters not mapping on ASCII."
>>
>> I have nothing to say about the second bullet, but regarding
>> the first -- at least the _intention_ was that you could
>> write your own 'fetch_fun' and fetch documents from anywhere,
>> e.g. using the now supported http client in INETS.
> 
> To write your own 'fetch_fun' and fetch documents from anywhere
> is indeed still possible, thus I would argue that the first mentioned 
> shortcoming is not true.

As far as I know the 'fetch_fun' functionality is not changed in the OTP 
version of xmerl. Still it doesn't fetch entities referenced by an URL 
by default. It should have been added that you can write your own fetch 
function in that passage of the documentation, I admit. Though I have 
not tested whether it works.

/Bertil Karlsson