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Re: Question for the XPath and DOM folks

• To: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Subject: Re: Question for the XPath and DOM folks
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 21:23:52 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from Mike Champion <mc@x...> of "Sat, 20 Jul 2002 21:26:55 EDT." <HBWSSRRQ6Z6XUYXT3WOM31NL3YFB1X.3d3a0ddf@MChamp>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> Yup.  The havoc that CDATA sections and external entities play with tree
> data models is becoming obvious,

I recognized this when DOM L2 was moving through draft and a long thread on 
www-dom about how TreeWalker interacted with entity ref nodes illustrated how 
brittle everything had become.

It was also a long thread on www-dom that made me understand how mad the idea 
of live node iterators was.

I must say, though, was that all it took was the first, cursory reading of the 
L2 namespaces section to understand how deeply broken it was.  No thread 
needed  :-)


> and the notion that they HAVE to be resolved
> or thrown away before the InfoSet-based specs see them is becoming widely
> accepted.  That seemed like "cheating" in DOM Level 1 days.
> In retrospect, the 80/20 solution seems obvious, but recall that two years
> ago, the notion that XML 1.0 was more complex than it really ought to be was
> quasi-heretical even on this list. 

I (and Mike Olson) learned started implementing DOM almost immediately after 
learning XML back in early '88.  It's dangerous for me to try stretching my 
memory back that far, but I think most of the choices made in DOM seemed 
perfectly sensible back then.  So I should probably not blame anyone for those 
L1 decisions.  However, I agree with you that a re-start would be nice.

I should make the point, though, that Megginson's choices in SAX 1.0 do seem 
remarkably prescient.  It came after DOM L1, but only a little bit afterwards. 
 Also, IIRC, Megginson also waved off the SML crowd, so it's interesting that 
SAX got things so rightly.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
The many heads of XML modeling - http://adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6393
Will XML live up to its promise? - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/li
brary/x-think11.html

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    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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