Re: The DOM is not a model, it is a library!

----- Original Message -----
From: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
To: DOM Mailing List <www-dom@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 1999 2:04 PM
Subject: Re: The DOM is not a model, it is a library!


> Michael Champion wrote:
> > I submit that the DOM can still be useful if anyone can use hasFeature()
to
> > define a subset of features that they support that is presumed to be
useful
> > FOR THEIR TARGET DOMAIN.  Now people define subsets more or less on
their
> > own, with no mechanism for sub-communities to define common subsets of
the
> > API or to query to see if the subset they need is supported.
>
> Better IMHO would be to rework the "core" a bunch, removing most of the
> "convenience" functions and creating interfaces from which the current
> core would derive.  (That's fully conformant with evolution in IDL.)

>Best to have a truly minimal
> core, which doesn't incur those costs.
>

I fully agree PERSONALLY ... but I don't think it's a practical approach at
this point.  Needless to say, I can't get into who advocates what, but
suffice it to say that there are very strong and different opinions about
which features are TRULY the most fundamental.  Remember that the DOM spec
is the result of a collaboration between browser, editor, and server-side
vendors; Windows/COM and Java/CORBA advocates; Java, script, and C++
developers; companies that were traditionally HTML vendors and those that
were traditionally SGML vendors; those whose users are basically page
authors who write some script and those whose users are professional
programmers ... the list of axes along which one can disagree about what the
"truly minimal core" should be in the DOM goes on and on.

[This has been a very educational experience for me -- it's a miracle that
there's any standards at all, not a curse that the standards are less than
elegant!]

Mike Champion

Received on Thursday, 7 October 1999 15:11:53 UTC