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

[Uche Ogbuji]

> Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> writes:
> 
> > I fought the good fight against ranges in XPointer...evil,
> > unmitigated evil.
> 
> Aren't ranges necessary to link to a section of an external document?
> Isn't there a similar feature in the grove model?

Any grove guru can smack me down whenever they like, but I'm pretty sure that 
the SGML grove model that underlies the XML infoset only allows 
character-level addressability in sane places (such as within character data). 
 Ranges go above and beyond.

> I know that I would find ranges useful for "clipping" content out of
> other documents for inclusion in summary docs.

Sure, you could do this just fine with XPointer's (via XPath's) substring 
function or by string manipulation on the DOM.  You don't need ranges for this 
sensible use-case.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +01 303 583 9900 x 101
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