Comments on the DOM Specification Draft 09-Dec-1997

Hi,

 for my thesis for diploma I need a SGML or XML data structure and I
decided to use DOM.  By building an implementation of DOM in Java I`ve
gone through the "DOM Specification Draft 09-Dec-1997" and found some
bugs and inconsistencies:

1. DOMFactory offers a method for creating attributes, but there is no
   way to build a (Editable)NodeList which is needed to create an
   Attribute.  The method

     EditableNodeList createEditableNodeList()

   should be added to DOMFactory.


2. DOMFactory offers a method for creating elements, but there is no
   way to build a AttributeList which is needed to create an element.
   The method

     AttributeList createAttributeList();

   should be added to DOMFactory.

3. The name of the method createTextNode(String) is inconsistent
   within the DOMFactory interface.  The method should be named
   createText.

4. The name PI in constants and method names is inconsistent since all 
   other node names are written in full.  On the other side the name
   ProcessingInstruction is very long ;-(.

5. There is an inconsistency within the specification for
   EditableNodeList.  According to the text which describes
   EditableNodeList the old node object at the given index is returned
   and null is returned if the index is equal to the previous number
   of nodes in the list, but in the IDL Interface definition (Appendix
   A) as well as in the Java Core API definitions (Appendix B) there
   is no return value declared.

6. In the IDL Interface definition (Appendix A) as well as in the Java
   Core API definitions (Appendix B) there is an interface with the
   name NamedNodeList defined but the isn't any comment on this
   interface in the text section of the specification.  Seems to be a
   relic of past times.

Regards,
 Thomas
--
        Traber Thomas
E-Mail: traber@informatik.uni-muenchen.de
  or    traber@oasis.leo.org
WWW:    http://www.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~traber/index.html

Received on Wednesday, 14 January 1998 12:20:31 UTC