[plt-scheme] XML ease of use

Hello.
I've lately been having all kinds of frustrations making things work with 
the XML library. The biggest hurdle seems to be keeping track of all the 
types. We have "document" and "element" and "content" and "prolog" and 
"entity" and "pcdata" and so on and so forth. Every function seems to accept 
a different type.

I think it would be helpful if there were some kind of abstract super-type 
for at least some of these things. Something similar to what the "content/c" 
contract checks for would be ideal, so that all those items could be treated 
the same until we wanted to differentiate them. Except I would think that 
"pcdata" and the like would be subtypes of "element."

One other thing that bites me every time is that the "content" field of the 
"element" structure is actually specified by the contract (listof 
content/c). Either the name is wrong or the contract is.

I don't know if self-referential contracts are possible, but it would be 
nice if content/c was really something like (or/c 
(current-definition-of-content/c) (listof content/c)). That's only one 
possible solution, though.

The reason I don't like getting this (listof content/c) is that there is not 
much useful I can do with it. Since it doesn't satisfy content/c, I can't 
pass it to xml->xexpr or write-xml/content. Since it's not a document, I 
can't pass it to write-xml. I suppose I could do (apply string-append (map 
write-xml thing)), but that seems more involved than it has to be. If I 
could treat (listof content/c) the same as content/c that would go a long 
way towards making things easier.

A form like "xml-match" would be very helpful, too, to avoid having to delve 
into the internals of the different xml structures.

I think PLT Scheme's XML capabilities are very close to being the best thing 
out there, so I hope you take these as constructive suggestions.
Thanks!
-Eddie Sullivan