[jdom-interest] Stirring up Trouble

[Simon St.Laurent]

At 03:52 PM 7/19/00 -0700, Jason Hunter wrote:
>> I really think JDOM is the wrong place to be making this judgement.
>> Your argument is really with what XML parsers should be doing.
>
>I disagree.  The reason I put effort into creating JDOM was to have an
>API for reading and manipulating XML that was convenient.  That's my
>number one goal.  That convenience has tended to mean better
>performance, then great!  That convenience has tended to mean
>lighterweight, then great!  That convenience can be done while being XML
>1.0 spec compliant, then fabulous!  That's where I'm coming from here.

Sorry to be the standards-fascist (where's Alex when I need him?), but I've
got to go with Elliotte and Brett here.

The 'XML approach to whitespace' may feel counter-intuitive or
inconvenient, but there are a lot of reasons for that, and a lot of specs
whose behavior depends on that understanding.

I don't mind making convenience methods a tad more difficult if it reminds
programmers about the underlying nature of the data they're manipulating.
Personally, I can type false as many times as necessary.

(I just hate the people who design markup and coding syntax to use
characters requiring the shift key.)

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books