[jdom-interest] JDOM as a JSR

[Jason Hunter]

> As you know, I'm attempting to implement many W3C 
> standards/recommendations on top of JDOM.  

Yep, you're the man!  :-)

> We've already seen the Namespace thing crop up (and solved 
> recently, thanks to Brett).

> But there are some other things, such as comments/PI's existing 
> only in the Document and not actually as children of the Elements 
> in which they appear in the byte-stream.

Hmm... that was fixed back in May.  Are you referring to a new problem I
don't know about?

> Yes, JDOM is darn handy for manipulation of XML documents, but
> it makes it difficult to create a completely compliant implementation
> of XPath, for example.  An uncompliant XPath leads to an uncompliant
> XSLT processor and uncompliant XML-canonicalization processor.

Sure, we're dedicated to compliance.  It's a hard job though, because
the XML specs are rapidly evolving (they make Internet time look slow)
and aren't yet 100% internally consistent.  But that's why people like
you who are working at the nexus of the various specs are so crucial to
finding issues.

> I could see these issues cropping up in front of other committees,
> when attempting to gain official recognition.
> 
> Though, I'd like to see JDOM kill DOM for the Java platform.
> 
> So, should I...
> 
>         ... beg & plea for some changes?

Definitely.  Not all things are clear cut.  Like I know you're
interested in replacing String with a Text class to make an XPath
implementation easier.  I'm not sure that's a compliance issue though.

>         ... wait until the JSR process, and bring up these 
> issues again?

Sure, don't stop.  :-)  It'd be good to have a full list in TODO.txt.

>         ... submit verbose use-cases, referencing examples 
> and standards?

If you have the time, please!

>         ... submit patches to fix what I see is wrong?

That's just wonderful when you can do that.  But of course we can't skip
the earlier steps to convince all participants it's a good idea.  :-)

-jh-