[jdom-interest] API instability?

[Jason Hunter]

> >    - change Element.getChild(String) so that it uses the
> >      namespace of the parent instead of the default namespace;
> >      if you want the default namespace, you can always pass null
> 
> Ah.... this will never get in, because it has some very subtle bugs. A
> namespace is part of an Element, not part of an Element's scope. You are
> going to run into some tricky bugs when you start moving elements
> between documents, or within a document where the namespace scopes
> aren't the same. I would advise against this - the trouble of adding the
> Namespace is minor, IMO.

I'm not sure it's the right thing to go this way but let's look it
over.  I don't see what bugs you'd have when moving elements between
docs.  The simple idea is that if you have

<foo:parent>
  <foo:child/>
</foo:parent>

When you say parent.getChild("child") it's kinda natural for the
unspecified namespace of "child" to be the same as the parent, not the
no-namespace.  It's a simple way of thinking: ask Bob Jones about his
kid Billy and he naturally refers to the Billy in the Jones namespace. 
:-)

Using the XML default makes the one-arg version of getChild() pretty
much useless in a "namespaced" document.  One cool thing with this
change is that if you had that <JavaXML:chapter> content you use in your
book then once you got the root you could just use getChild()
everywhere.  Kinda nice.

-jh-