- From: Joseph Kesselman <keshlam@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:05:20 -0400
- To: <www-dom@w3.org>
>Why it is defined on Node and not Element is another question. Very deliberate. We wanted the DOM to be fully operable without requiring that folks downcast from Node. Casts are surprisingly expensive in some environments, and can be a distraction even when they aren't. In theory, if you have Node, NodeList, and NamedNodeMap you can retrieve or modify anything in your main document tree. I've seen some minimalist subsets of the DOM built on that basis. Of course they weren't DOM-compliant, but they _were_ DOM-compatable; anything that worked on them would work on a "real" DOM, though of course the reverse isn't true. (Is it worth adding this to the FAQ, is it documented in our design principles somewhere, or is it unnecessary trivia?) ______________________________________ Joe Kesselman / IBM Research
Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2001 09:05:55 UTC