SV: [jdom-interest] Life or death of the Parent interface

[Per Norrman]

Hi,

There definitely is some merit in the Parent/Content constructs, BUT,
the problem is that you'll be breaking a lot of existing code with 
the introduction of Parent and the behavioural change of addContent
et al. Perhaps method chaining isn't the best idiom around, but after 
*four* years it's become somewhat of a JDOM signum. Not all people will
be happy ....

I just think it's too late in the game to introduce conceptual changes
like this. MHO.

/pmn


> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org 
> [mailto:jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org] För Jason Hunter
> Skickat: den 20 februari 2004 21:03
> Till: jdom-interest at jdom.org
> Ämne: [jdom-interest] Life or death of the Parent interface
> 
> 
> So people seem to like the Content abstract class, but 
> there's been some 
> pushback on the Parent interface.  Some have suggested removing the 
> interface entirely.  I'm wondering if that might be best.
> 
> Its main purpose right now could be described as a generic type for 
> setParent() to take and getParent() to return.  There's also 
> the benefit 
> when learning the API that you quickly see how Document and Element 
> share a core set of methods.  Those benefits are nice, but really not 
> critical.
> 
> What people don't like is that now the various Parent methods -- 
> addContent, setContent, getParent -- return Parent instead of the 
> specific Element or Document type on which they're acting.  
> By removing 
> Parent we could fix that and simplify the API by one class.  
> We'd just 
> change getParent/setParent to use Object.  As another 
> secondary perk, we 
> would avoid the Parent/Content odd naming convention.
> 
> In the end I don't think this is a critical design issue one 
> way or the 
> other, but I'd like to make sure the situation is fully understood 
> before deciding.
> 
> Am I right in classifying the pros/cons of each proposal?  Is the 
> biggest complaing about Parent how it reduces the ability to chain? 
> What about the lost ability to chain a 
> getParent().getParent() sequence?
> 
> -jh-
> 
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