Arnaud- I hope we can both agree to move this discussion to [EMAIL PROTECTED] from now on - I am sure lots of people are tired of hearing us already ;-)
> > So, if the DOM is "ridiculously complex", JDOM appears to be > ridiculously simple... Sorry, I couldn't resist. ;-) This is sort of the crux of your comments - I address other comments individually later on. But this is for the readers who just want to read a paragraph and click 'Next' ;-) I understand that DOM is, in a sense, your "baby," as you are both co-editor of the DOM spec and co-chair of the XML Working Group, and that you are very involved at the W3C. Could it be possible that you are being a bit biased? I suggest this because you seem to imply that there is an either-or relationship between DOM and JDOM. In fact, we go to great pains to make sure that you can go from DOM or SAX to JDOM, and from JDOM to DOM or SAX. This, if anything, indicates we are /very/ committed to standards. We just feel that if you have standard input and output, why whould all the stuff "in the middle" give you such a headache when, in many cases, it doesn't have to? We are offering Java developers an alternative. Certainly as you know, the users will dictate what is used much more than you or I, right? ;-) I hope you will give JDOM the chance that people have given DOM, and where it works, admit that. Certainly I am willing to admit where your API does things that ours doesn't, and point users to you... thanks... my other comments are below. > Hi all, > > While I unfortunately missed the presentation last night, I had a look > at JDOM. I must say that while it is definitely simpler, it can hardly > compare to the DOM. > I'll be the first one to say that the DOM is far from being the cleanest > and leanest API one could dream of but, unlike JDOM, at least it > truthfully represents XML. It sounds like there may have been a misunderstanding. As JDOM is so new, this is something that tends to happen with exciting products, especially in the Java and XML arena, where things move so fast. JDOM is not intended to be a 100% accurate representation of XML. Instead, it is an API specifically for Java developers, and even further, aimed at Java developers who are perhaps not XML gurus, per say. While certainly there are things that you, or I, or other XML-ites may look at and say "Well, that's not technically correct," these same items are often the reason that so many developers are so concerned about using XML, and have such a hard time. We are very honest about the fact that we seek to solve 80% of the problems of Java and XML, not 100%. Additionally, we are very clear when we deviate. In fact, in addition to the numerous documentation and slides where we lay this out, we are adding a FAQ section; this means there are three clearly marked places. Honestly, if you read the docs at all, you can't miss it ;-) You might want to hop onto [EMAIL PROTECTED] now, as we are discussing some of these features, and if the goal of "100% accuracy" is worth the price paid for it (re: DOM, which we both know, for reasons that are legitimate, is a heavy API). In some cases, we believe it is not, such as the PI placement within a document. However, I want to be clear to you and others that we have not and do not seek to conceal this; I was a bit put off by your implication that we were being misleading, as all of our press and docs are very clear that our goal is usability, and intuitiveness, not to be a replacement for DOM and SAX in every situation, always. > > The way namespaces are handled show a clear misunderstanding of the > basics of XML namespaces and, unless a serious redesign is undertaken, > it will only work for simple cases. This is also a bit strong of a statement, I think. I just finished authoring the O'Reilly book, "Java and XML", and feel I am pretty strong in the XML world ;-) There is a difference in simplifying something (intentionally) to help out the common Java developer, as opposed to not understanding something at all. Additionally, we actually removed the support for scoped namespaces, and it only took about 30 minutes ;-) So it's not that big a change at all. I hope you'll join us on jdom-interest to find out more about our direction! -Brett
