Re: DOM L2 comments, various

So far, ASP syntax is the best argument I've heard for extending the node types.
I still don't like the idea -- the risk of breaking code that runs under "real"
DOMs seems excessive to me, and I'm not sure I really feel compelled to support
all the prior-art kluges that relied on browser toleration of poorly-formed HTML
-- but at least this one makes some sense to me as an actual insertion into the
document.

Parsing the content of a <script> _doesn't_ do it for me. That's string content,
as far as the document itself is concerned. If you want to preparse it and hang
the parse tree off the side of that node, great... but in my opinion that's
clearly outside the DOM's scope.

Re low-memory/large-document: Remember that the DOM is only an API; how the data
is stored behind it is up to the implementation. There is room for cleverness
and tradeoffs here. I just went through such an experiment; I admit that what I
came up with isn't a full DOM, but it could be made so if I was willing to grow
the nodes just slightly; it performs abysmally at some tasks, but it shoud be
small and fast at the ones it's intended for. (I'm waiting for user feedback.)
As Steve said, there is no "_THE_ DOM" -- there are many legitimate
implementations, tuned for different needs, and there will also be tasks for
which a document model other than the DOM is the best answer.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research

Received on Monday, 4 October 1999 17:03:43 UTC