The Peace Process: DOM and namespaces...

[Bill la Forge]

From: Tyler Baker <tyler at infinet.com>
>The issue here is using the standard DOM interfaces to do the job.  If you subclass the DOM
>and use this new type you defined to manage namespaces, then you might as well not use the DOM
>at all because this is a proprietary feature.


I am afraid I don't understand where proprietary feature comes in, nor the need for subclassing.

Lets say I have an off-the-shelf parser (AElfred?) and an off-the-shelf DOM (Docuverse?).

I'm writing a program that needs to use the DOM to process documents that use namespaces.
So I wrap John Cowan's inheritance filter around the parser and feed the filter to the DOM.
Then I write a static methods for fetching a qualified name from an element...

    public static String getQualified(Element);

My application then uses this 5-line method to access the qualified names when it needs them.
I then manipulate the tree as needed. When done, I walk the tree, generating SAX events,
feed them through an uninherit filter, and compose a document from the result.

Yes, my application is proprietary. It should be!

But the interfaces are conformant. And the components are all conformant. And it was
pretty easy to use all this conformant software to put together an application which 
pushes a document which uses namespaces through the DOM.

Isn't this the real strength of standards? Being able to get off-the-shelf software from
multiple vendors, integrate them into an application, and do something real???

I really don't understand your comment.

Bill



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