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

[Jim Fulton]

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Jim Fulton wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > If you store the parent in the child, then you are causing a circular reference
> > which is very likely to cause a leak. An API that requires implementation of
> > __getattr__ to avoid storing the parent encourages storing the parent.
> 
> An API that has a getParent() method also encourages storing the parent.
> The DOM is the source ofthe problem.

I don't agree. It fact, it certainly suggests that some computation is
possible.  If I want to compute the parent, I can do so without mucking
with __getattr__. OTOH, if I have to support "foo.parent" (as I 
apparently do) then the only way to avoid implementing __getattr__
is to store the darn thing.

(snip)
> You can implement a DOM subset that only supports the method versions.

Noooooooooo. If I'm going to bother to implement DOM, I want it
to work with all DOM clients.

> We can easily whip up adapter proxies that make your DOMs compliant with
> the full attributes+methods API if interoperability becomes an issue. If
> you get hundreds of Python objects to support your DOM interface then we
> may think twice about being partially incompatible with them and migrate
> our users to the method version.

Whimper. I don't want *my* DOM API. I want there to be exactly *one*
official documented Python DOM API mapping. I'd prefer that the mapping
be as easy as possible to implement and use and, as a bonus, it would be 
swell if it worked well with Zope, which the current API doesn't. Oh
well.

Jim

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