[XML-SIG] repost: getElementsByTagName interpretation

[Uche Ogbuji]

> On Fri, Jun 23, 2000 at 05:09:13PM +0200, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> >On the one hand I desperately want to implement the simple non-live behavior,
> >as doing the other is a major pain. On the other hand, I'd risk introducing
> >an incompatibility with other DOMs.
> 
> I'd be interested in knowing if there's any DOM that *does* implement
> the live NodeList behaviour for getElementsByTagName(); when I looked
> at IBM's and Sun's around that time, they certainly didn't seem to.
> Mozilla's doesn't seem to, either.  Can anyone point to a DOM that
> actually does provide this liveness feature?  I suspect there are
> none...

I think most do now, after long debate about it on www-dom.

> Frankly, the DOM spec is broken in this respect; supporting a live
> NodeList from getElementsByTagName() would add a lot of complexity, a
> lot of bookkeeping, and more bugs.  I don't think it's worth the pain.

Actually, using Level 2 mutation events would lessen the pain, but the key is 
doing so without too much performance penalty on thise who (sensibly) don't 
want to mutate the DOM during traversal.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +01 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
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