[jdom-interest] Next JDOM evolution

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 9:58 PM -0800 3/29/02, Dennis Sosnoski wrote:
>Phil's comments illustrate exactly why I made the remark quoted. If 
>JDOM is going to continue to be promoted for use in real products I 
>think the development team owes it to their users to (1) keep the 
>API stable, possibly adding methods but not breaking code in new 
>releases, and (2) support and provide fixes to the released version 
>rather than just the then-current CVS version.
>

This is a beta of a 1.0 product. I don't think we're ready to make 
any promises of API stability yet. For what it's worth, we are 
getting close and I do plan to spend a large chunk of the next month 
reading through the entire JDOM Javadocs and code base to try to pick 
up on any problems that remain. I'll be doing this as part of writing 
the JDOM chapters of Processing XML with Java.

>Otherwise, I feel JDOM should come with the same sort of disclaimer 
>as the Sun Early Access releases of other JSRs - evaluation only, 
>everything subject to change, not for use in production products, 
>etc. As it is right now JDOM sometimes appears to be claiming the 
>stature of a standard without accepting the responsibility that goes 
>along with it.
>

It's not a standard. It is a JSR. If someone really needs stability 
they can pick a milestone and not upgrade it.
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo at metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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