[XML-SIG] Ugh! Why are DOM access methods spelled with a leading '_'?

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

tpassin@home.com writes:
 >  Actually, the W3C DOM standard said that all the bindings were derived from
 > an underlying XML original:

  I don't recall the quoted text from the version of the
recommendation I read, but it probably wasn't a recommendation at the
time either!  (And I may have just missed it.)  

 > Perhaps if we were starting from scratch again, emphasizing the XML base
 > instead of CORBA mappings (I assume these were worked out before the XML
 > work was really off the ground), we'd get a different solution.  It's
 > probably too late for that since things are pretty far along.  But since the
 > W3C DOM was not developed in IDL, there would seem to be no strong reason to
 > be limited by the some particular IDL mapping techinique instead of the
 > underlying XML.

  We might end up with a different result, but would it be as
(potentially) useful?  I don't see how.  If the IDL is normative (and
I don't see anything saying otherwise as I look at the document), then
it seems it must be supported to be compliant.  Is the IDL
non-normative, and I just missed the notation in the recommendation?

 > As I said in my post on this from last November, consistency in naming is
 > important, which is part of what Jim is getting at too.

  Agreed, which is why I don't like seeing several mappings in the W3C
recommendation.  There should be only one, and the IDL is the right
one for that.  If any of the languages don't have IDL mappings, that
should be dealt with by either creating an interim mapping that does
just enough, or by writing a DOM-specific binding in a separate
document.


  -Fred


-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at beopen.com>
BeOpen PythonLabs Team Member