[jdom-interest] jdom and dom4j

[Jon Baer]

Well technically it wasn't really directed to one individual, just a 
general sense of things and by all means stay subscribed because we all 
love Jaxen :-)  But you brought up a very good point in pull parsing via 
XPath, etc ... it just goes to show that there is solid point for having 
forks (or whatever u want to call it) because no matter how 
simple/incomplex you want to keep something there will always be others 
who want more out of an API to the point that it becomes an almost 
complete redesign that the original creators would either tend to a) 
laugh at or b) make a good explaination of why it doesn't belong in 
their API but others could have used it (I think the "to interface or 
not to interface" was a perfect case of it) ...

I guess my original point was to create some stir to bring back more of 
the "contrib" to JDOM because it originally seemed that an extension to 
JDOM was pretty much the area of where "oh you dont wanna do that 
because it already exists somewhere else" ... personally I think you and 
James had the best ideas for extending JDOM outside of the original plan 
but Im bummed it had to lead to two different APIs ... :-\

- Jon

bob mcwhirter wrote:

>>I too have respects for all work and programmers on Java/XML but what 
>>irks me alot (happens on other lists as well) is that you have all the 
>>initial designers subscribed to *all* the lists and when someone asks a 
>>completely legitimate question in terms of how to accomplish something 
>>with Program A, the Program B author pops right on stating that "Well 
>>you can do it with Program B so easy", so Id like to tend to think that 
>>some people are only subscribed for these little marketing plugs rather 
>>than trying to help the program @ hand.  
>>    
>>
>
>Jon--
>
>I feel I may be the guy you're targetting that comment to, as I tend
>to toss in notes about dom4j here and there.  I'll admit, I pretty
>much always use dom4j these days.  But, I stay subscribed to the JDOM
>list since I have to straddle that fence with Jaxen.  While I may
>not be using JDOM a lot, many of my (Jaxen's) users do.  If I see
>a user trying to do something that'd be easier with another tool
>(ie, parsing a 60meg XML doc, and applying XPaths), I feel I should
>offer my advice of possibly trying a different tool.  Else, we're
>not a whole lot better than Microsofties who've drunk the Kool-Aide.
>
>Anyhow, I'll personally keep the dom4j comments out of jdom-interest
>for now on.  I truly don't mean to start flame-wars.
>
>James Strachan, the main designer (or forker, if you will) of dom4j
>has been unsubscribed from jdom-interest for quite a while, I think.
>
>	-bob
>
>  
>