[jdom-interest] Issues with XMLOutputter

[philip.nelson at omniresources.com]

Look back in the archives, possibly in July.  Alex Chaffe had a whole list
of improvements to XMLOutputter proposed but I don't remember what they
were.  

Of course, I don't know where Alex is either...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Bentley [mailto:gb at opengroup.org]
> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 4:03 AM
> To: jdom-interest at jdom.org
> Subject: [jdom-interest] Issues with XMLOutputter
> 
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I am currently writing a subclass of XMLOutputter and I have a few 
> queries/issues with it:
> 
> 	1.  The actual indent used is not available...should I 
> use indent ()?
> 
> 	2.  The doIndent variable is not available...should I 
> use indent()?
> 
> 	3.  The expandEmptyElements variable is not 
> available...if I override
> 	     printElement how do I know whether to expand empty 
> elements?
> 
> 	4.  The textNormalize variable is not available...does 
> this matter for
> 	     printing out the content of an element?
> 
> 	5.  It would be really useful to have printAttributes 
> take in the indent
> 	     level since then you could "prettify" the 
> attributes...i.e. not have to
> 	     print them on a single line, my personal 
> preference for prettied
> 	     attributes is:
> 
> 		<test a="hello"
> 		        b="hi there" />
> 
> 	     Since this would probably break existing 
> applications a new method
> 	     protected int getIndentLevel () would probably be 
> better...or make the
> 	     indentLevel int protected.
> 
> 	6.  If would be very useful to have a printContent that 
> would handle the
> 	    printing of a object...i.e. so that I don't have to 
> handle each type of
> 	    content explicitly in the printElement method, it 
> could throw an
> 	    IllegalArgumentException if you passed the wrong type.
> 
> 	    So you would pass it an Object, which would be a 
> CDATA, Element
> 	    etc...and it would then call the relevant method...i.e.
> 
> 		if (Object instanceof CDATA)
> 		{
> 
> 		     printCDATA ...
> 
> 		}
> 
> 	7.  Who handles the new lines?  i.e. should I have to 
> worry about it?
> 	     Especially if I override printElement?  i.e. when 
> I close off the
> 	     tag with > should I put on a new line before 
> calling printX.  Since
> 	     the newlines boolean is not available how do I 
> know whether to?
> 
> 	8.  When is printElement (without List) called as 
> opposed to printElement
> 	     with the content List?
> 
> 	9.  I presume printString is used for printing the 
> actual content of the
> 	     element, i.e. the textual content, is this 
> correct?  So I would use:
> 
> 		printString (Element.getText ());
> 
> 	     How does tie in with the normalizing of text? 	     
> 
> 	10. If I override printElement effectively I am taking 
> control of the whole
> 	     tree walk...is this true?  If so, having the 
> variables available becomes
> 	     necessary...
> 
> Any and all thoughts on this would be appreciated...
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gary
> 
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