Description of textContent incorrect for attributes

I think the description of textContent in the DOM Level 3 Core
Specification is incorrect with respect to attributes.

The description of textContent[1] begins:

  textContent of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3

    This attribute returns the text content of this node and its
    descendants...

which makes sense, but subsequently:

  The string returned is made of the text content of this node
  depending on its type, as defined below:

    Node type    Content

    ELEMENT_NODE, ATTRIBUTE_NODE,   concatenation of the textContent attribute  
    ENTITY_NODE,                    value of every child node, excluding        
    ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE,          COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
    DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE          nodes. This is the empty string if the node 
                                    has no children.                            

    TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE,  nodeValue
    COMMENT_NODE,
    PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE     

    DOCUMENT_NODE,                  null
    DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE,
    NOTATION_NODE                

Surely ATTRIBUTE_NODEs belong in the second row of that table. As
currently specified, the textContent of an ATTRIBUTE_NODE is the
concatentation of the textContent values of its children. As
attributes have no children, it must always be null.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407/core.html#Node3-textContent

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | It does not do harm to the mystery to
http://nwalsh.com/            | know a little about it. For far more
                              | marvelous is the truth than any artists
                              | of the past imagined!--Richard Feynman

Received on Thursday, 12 October 2006 14:42:38 UTC