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

[Jim Fulton]

Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> 
> > I'll be willing to give on this, however, I assert that
> > a decision isn't a decision unless it's published.
> >
> > It doesn't help when the people who made the decision
> > can't seem to remember what it was.

This was too strongly worded

> _Completely_ untrue. 

That's strong, and I can't agree with this characterization.

> Can you point me to a post where someone said they don't
> kow what the decision was? 

There were a number of posts that made it seem that 
there wasn't a consensus.  For example, 

  http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2000-June/004258.html

    Mike says "The methods really are not part of the DOM API".

    That is, just use the attributes.

  http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2000-June/004261.html

     Fred says "The W3C documentation gives the IDL mapping, 
     which requires the Python specific mapping.".

     Fred reinforces this in 
     http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2000-June/004299.html

     Now since the Python CORBA mapping doesn't provide for
     direct attribute access, a reasonable person would expect that
     Python DOM uses accessor methods (with leading '_'s).

  http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2000-June/004285.html
  
     Dieter says "DOM is specified in terms of IDL.
     Python has an IDL -> Python mapping.
     Deviating from this mapping for DOM only would require special
     knowledge -- a thing I do not like."

     Hm, based on the Python IDL mapping, we use accessor methods
  
I could go on, but I won't.

If there was a published mapping, we wouldn't be covering this
ground again.

> I _can_ point you to posts where the consensus was
> summarized.  See, for instance
> 
> http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/1999-November/003281.html  (and
> following posts)
> 
> http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/1999-November/003313.html
> 
> The whole affair started in the "4DOM future" thread and continued in the
> "foo.bar vs. foo.get_bar()", rounding out in the "CORBA compliance for the DOM
> in Python?" thread and other sundry conversations.

Thanks. How would anyone know about this without living in the SIG or
searching the archives? Obviously they wouldn't.

Even after reading these, I don't see a very strong
consensus. The strongest indication of consensus is in the
second link you provided, which points to an 
"unofficial Python binding".

> > Supposedly, the
> > decision was that DOM attributes are accessed as ordinary
> > Python attributes, as in::
> >
> >   foo.nodeName
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > yet several people seemed to think that attributes are obtained
> > via accessor functions:
> >
> >   foo._get_nodeName()
> 
> Yes.  The decision was "both".  See the links.

OK, I'll try to summarize this in a sperate message.

Jim

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