- From: Joseph Kesselman <keshlam@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 11:24:55 -0400
- To: Olivier Dameron <olivier.dameron@chu-rennes.fr>
- Cc: www-dom@w3.org
The DocumentType was defined as being set only at document creation time because there was a concern that some DOM implementations might want to select different subclasses based on the kind of document being processed. (The requirement that createDocument() also create the Document Element, which may never be replaced thereafter, partly arose from the same concern... though there was a well-formedness issue as well.) For example: A DOM implementation might want to recognize HTML documents and automatically create an HTMLDocument rather than a core Document. We recognize that this isn't an ideal sequence for those of you writing parsers, which may need to stack up a series of doctypes and PIs and comments before you have enough information to call createDocument. DOM Level 3 may introduce alternative approaches to document creation which relax this. And DOM Level 3's Content Model work may introduce the ability to alter or replace the DocumentType on an existing document. But this is all work-in-progress and wasn't ready for standardization in DOM Level 2. ______________________________________ Joe Kesselman / IBM Research
Received on Tuesday, 10 April 2001 11:25:35 UTC