Re: Consensus on the gray areas of the DOM API

Did we really agree that hasChildNodes should return false if there is a
child but it is an empy-string Text node? If so, I missed it, since I read
this as "If you ask whether there are children, you find out whether there
are children. To find out if they're empty, ask for the string value of the
attribute... or ask the kids for their contents."

Ditto re getChildNodes. Returned NodeList should be empty if there are no
nodes to list; it should not be empty if there is a node but it contains an
empty string.

(The question of whether an empty string text-node _should_ be created can
be debated. But since I don't think the DOM provides any way to prevent
this from happening, the important thing seems to be to return useful
information when it does.)

BTW, the last point of the latter is an incomplete sentence, and I'm not
sure what was intended...

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research
Unless stated otherwise, all opinions are solely those of the author.

Received on Monday, 12 October 1998 14:50:55 UTC