[jdom-interest] AleXMLOutputter

[Patrick Dowler]

On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Alex Chaffee wrote:
> > > > Anyway: why Elements, PIs, DocType etc.. don't extend the same basic
> > > > class?
> 
> I agree. There should be a common Node interface/abstract class; we
> could easily write a print(Node n) method in the XMLOutputter that
> would work for all Nodes.

Having a common Node base class is useful only if there is common code 
or you have a suitable amount of calling code that does the same thing
(logically: it calls the same method) on all of them and doesn't care what
type they are.  I don't really see Element, Attribute, ProcessingInstruction,
and Comment sharing any code.

Also, using inheritance so you have one method like "print(Node n)"
is kind of a waste because then inside there you have to branch on
type when you could have let java do it for you with method overloading.

--

Patrick Dowler
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre