[jdom-interest] Merging text nodes

[Dennis Sosnoski]

I agree with Alex that the auto-magical text merging behavior can create 
problems. Why not use a normalize()-type method to handle this (which 
could even be in a support class, rather than in the core classes)? That 
way the code complexity is reduced and there's no overhead for checking 
possible merges unless the user actually makes the request.

  - Dennis

Alex Rosen wrote:

>I never thought that merging text nodes under the covers was a particularly
>important feature. It probably wouldn't happen very often; it adds
>complexity to the code; and anyone that actually cares can just do it
>themselves.
>
>>The kicker is add(int,Object),
>>for example
>>
>>    element.addContent( new Element("e1"));          // index = 0
>>    element.addContent( new Text("This is a test")); // index = 1
>>    element.addContent( new Element("e2"));          // index = 2
>>    List list = element.getContent();
>>    list = element.add(2, new Text(", only a test");
>>
>>with Text nodes merged then list.get(2) yields e2 instead of a Text node.
>>But I can live with that if others can.
>>
>
>I think this might be a problem... suppose you were iterating over the
>children, adding or removing nodes? Presumably set() and remove() would also
>merge newly-adjacent text nodes, which could cause the following (weird, but
>legal) code to fail:
>
>List content = element.getContent();
>int count = content.size();
>for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
>  content.set(i, "text");
>
>It also violates the contract of the List interface: the JavaDoc for
>add(int, Object) says "Shifts the element currently at that position (if
>any) and any subsequent elements to the right (adds one to their indices)."
>And similarly for remove(int).
>
>Alex Rosen
>alex at silverstream.com
>
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