FW: [jdom-interest] & in namespace

[J. McConnell]

On 5/4/06, Michael Kay <mike at saxonica.com> wrote:
> > > The one big thing I'd like would be if the various things
> > that return
> > > Collections would return parameterised values instead of the base
> > > classes that they return right now. For example,
> > Element.getChildren()
> > > is actually even documented to return a List of Elements, but the
> > > return type is plain old List. It would be nice if that were
> > > List<Element> instead, so you wouldn't need to cast all the time.
> >
> > I'll second that.
>
> If you make a product that's dependent on 1.5, you're losing a chunk of your
> market. It's not worth it at this stage. I still get occasional pleas from
> people who would like to run Saxon on JDK 1.3.

Yes, I understand the compatibility issues and I agree 100% that this
wouldn't be a move to make without taking that into consideration. 
However, posed the question "Are there things people want in a 1.1 or
2.0, or should we stay in happy maintenance mode," I would say that
there is something I would like to see, that's all.

If there are other features that people would like to see in a 1.1 or
2.0 release that would also benefit users running on JDK 1.4, then
generics support should be pushed off.  The focus then, I would think,
would be on building out new features for as wide an audience as
possible.  On the other hand, if it's the only feature people want to
see in a future release, then it might not hurt to start work on it,
given the stability of 1.0.  Maintaining a 1.0 or 1.0.1 branch for
bugfixes might not be too much overhead.

- J.