[jdom-interest] (no subject)

[Vadim.Strizhevsky at morganstanley.com]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Jason Hunter wrote:

> >>>Somehow that morphed into these
> >>>Parent/Child interfaces, which IMO don't add any value to API as they
> >>>stand right now. Having a single Node interface would for example
> >>>allow some apis that work on any JDOM object be more type safe by not
> >>>having to pass Object.
> >>
> >>They won't be any more type safe!  You could pass "MyBogusThing
> >>implements Node" and screw up the tree.
> >
> > Oh please.  Thats a BS argument and you know it.
>
> My desire to debate technical issue with you goes down dramatically when
> you call things "BS" and claim that I "know I'm giving a BS argument".

You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that and I apologize.
Sometimes I just get frustrated that I can't get my point accross, but its
my fault and no one elses. Please forgive me for this outburst.

> The people who work on this project respect each other and each other's
> opinions.  We don't always agree, but we believe we each have the
> project's best interests at heart.

Believe me I know. And its also my desire as well with the amount of
apps and users that I have to support who are using JDOM.

>
>  > If someone implements an
> > interface then they oblige to the contract of that interface.
>
> If we had a Node interface there would be very little in that
> "contract".  Not every XML "node" can go everywhere.  The rules are very
> specific.  So with or without a generic interface we'd have to check.

I understand that. I never implied that node could be used to "add"
things. I always thought it was only for generic traversal anyway...

> The only way we don't have to check is if we use explicit types like
> Element, DocType, and such.  But even then since we return a live List
> we have to check what you pass in since the List interface accepts any
> Object.  So we're checking regardless.  It's not a BS argument.  Having
> a Node interface doesn't give you any special type safety.

Not inside JDOM, that wasn't what I was saying, which is what I think
you talking about. But for example if you have a function, for example
XPath based function external to JDOM, that can be passed any JDOM object,
I think its better that it takes  org.jdom.Node then Object.  Even from
documentation perspective if nothing  else. That's all that I was trying
to say by that "type safety" comment.  The hope was that perhaps it would
have some interface that allows more generic traversal, but maybe its in
fact not possible as you keep argueing.

>
> > That's a huge loss. Do you realize how much change that is to the users? I
> > know you think JDOM is beta, and huge changes are ok until JDOM is 1.0 (3
> > years after the original start). But you know what, at some point its not.
> > You're just alienating users who really liked JDOM in the beginning,
> > thought it was a great replacement for DOM, and chose to use it for their
> > apps. Now you telling them to change in very significant way.
>
> Yep.  Your vote is counted.  In fact, you're repeating an argument I've
> used before.

Thank you.
-Vadim

>
> -jh-
>
>