[Doc-SIG] How to traverse a document object
Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)
tony@lsl.co.uk
Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:40:19 +0100
David Goodger wrote:
> If you insert methods from outside the module, yes, you *would* be
> presumptuous.
Ah, but the advantage we have with the DPS nodes tree is that one *can*
be presumptuous - it doesn't get one very far with "classic" DOM!
For clarification, my (quick and dirty) HTML output mode works with a
dictionary that links tag name to method name [1]_, with a special case
for "#text" ('cos it's special). Thus it doesn't actually assume much
about what includes what (although things will go strange if the
structure is *not* what one would expect from the spec).
Since I rather want a Writer class that can be customised easily, this
dictionary approach seems simplest for the initial development - it's
easy to subclass the Writer and just amend the dictionary entries.
.. [1] Actually, the tag name keys a method name and some
optional arguments, but that's enough detail for this
discussion.
I'm sure some visitor model would be nice at some stage, though - once
one has understood the thing (!) it works very nicely (cf. the
``compiler`` package).
Tibs
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