[jdom-interest] Philosophical XML (was API Inertia)

[Mike Haarman]

<philip>Because everybody is right, from their point of view.  There is not
one set of requirements that we can go to to guide us to the correct
solution.</philip>

Thus it is time to allow ourselves to be guided by the specifications.

<philip>I just don't want to throw away the essence of what JDOM is to
become a tree of Nodes rather than a Collection of JDOM objects.</philip>

There has been a lot of agon about the *dasein* of jdom.  It is not a
coincidence that James Strachan posted to this thread.  But one of these
structures holds more interpretive value, with or without a foreknowledge
of the structure of your document.

<philip>I can teach xml and java newcomers to use JDOM in a day or two.
With a Node basis, I would first have to review your cs102 data structures
texts (nobody remembers that course IMHO), then teach JDOM and XML
concepts.  This is essentially what happens when trying to teach
DOM.</philip>

Speaking as a thirty-something newbie who never had a data structures
class, I recognize a bargain being made in investing time t in jdom's
*eazie-dom* against time t2 spent learning an API which I have confidence
will integrate with, even if only on a conceptual level, a conforming
XLink/XPointer package.  Even a pup like me knows better that to bet
against feature creep.  The X is for eXtensible and remains the reason for
going to the bother of this eXercise at all.