macOS XML support from MAC OS 10.4 to 10.3 version

[imranpundeer]

Hi,

I am new to MAC development. I am developing an application on MAC OS 10.4 version, where we are using NSXML for XML related functionalities. Now as I also have to include support for MAC OS 10.3, I found two options in front of me:
1. Use libXML, which will work for all the version 10.3 and later or
2. Use Core foundation XML API

Please let me know which option is advisable and why.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[iSee]

I can't answer your actual question, but make sure you really need to support 10.3.

If you look around you'll see that 10.3 support has been dropped in later releases of a lot of software. It's rare in new development. I can't put my hand on it, but I saw a slide (was it last year's dev conference?) that showed Panther (10.3) with a small fraction of the total OS X market share.

A lot of the data that measures market share by browser use break Mac OS into PPC Mac OS and Intel Mac OS. All Intel Mac OS is >= 10.4, so you can get an idea from that.

Of course, certain markets are different. Schools (K-12), for example, tend to hold on to computers until they literally fall apart and they don't like to upgrade computers (it's relatively easy to get funding for new computer labs, but no so easy to get funding to update an existing one). For them you need to be really conservative. But it seems with consumers you can be very aggressive in dropping old OS X versions.

 

[kainjow]

There is also NSXMLParser on 10.3. The CF XML functions are good for very very basic XML but once you get down into using entities and such, they're a big PITA.

 

[BorgCopyeditor]

Don't know whether this helps, but it gives an example of writing a wrapper around libxml.

 

[imranpundeer]

Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestions

Regards,
Shadab