Re: Scripting and XML

Rasmus Lerdorf (rasmus@lerdorf.on.ca)
Sun, 19 Oct 1997 15:42:50 -0400 ()

> PHP/FI used to solve many problems that existed due to shortcomings
> in HTML. Now with XML, many of those are gone. But XML uses
> different ways than PHP/FI did. IMHO there are two possible
> solutions: Redesign PHP/FI to become XML compliant (which is not
> backward compatible), or just see it as a special Apache
> scripting language (where I like mod_perl more).

It is not Apache-specific like mod_perl though. PHP3 runs natively under
Windows as well now, and has both NSAPI and ISAPI support. There will
even be Unix-based ISAPI support to go along with the ISAPI-capable Zeus
server.

mod_perl is a very handy. I use it myself quite a bit. But there are a
lot of shortcomings, not the least of which being the Perl language itself
which can be extremely daunting to a non-programmer.

PHP is evolving. PHP3 is not completely backward compatible with PHP2 and
earlier. If I am going to make the jump to a full XML parser, then now is
probably a good time to do it. However, given the target audience of PHP,
forcing people to think in XML terms might be quite a stretch.

-Rasmus