[jdom-interest] Request -- please allow all XML 1.1 conformant text in Element.se tText()

[Chris B.]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> I have. Have you? Java assertions do not meet Meyer's design by 
> contract criteria. 


They are the closest thing we've got.

> More importantly Meyer allows only one reason for turning off 
> precondition checking, performance. (A point on which I disagree with 
> him.) He does not believe clients should be able to turn off 
> preconditions in order to change the semantics of a class as is being 
> requested here.


I havn't heard anybody saying they want to change the semantics of JDOM. 
They only want to force JDOM to assume that their data is correct 
without having it re-checked.

>
>> BTW, private members are evil. Everything should be protected. It's 
>> not up to you to decide how somebody may want to extend your object.
>
>
> Actually it is. As Joshua Bloch wrote, design for subclassing or 
> prohibit it.

> JDOM's had a lot of problems over the years because we failed to 
> follow this rule rigorously. The protected API is no less of a promise 
> to clients than the public API. Indeed allowing subclasses to change 
> too much violates the promises made in the public API.


Since Java doesn't have inherited preconditions, you're just going to 
have to trust that people who sub-class to not violate the public API. 
But as Bertrand Meyer would say, it's not up to you to predict and 
prevent people from extending your class.