DOM's javascript roots (was Re: [xml-dev] Have JDOM / XOM / etc. failed?

[Tatu Saloranta <cowtowncoder@yahoo.com>]

--- Chris Burdess <d09@hush.ai> wrote:

> Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > ... However, DOM was poison I already knew from
> JavaScript.

This used to be one of main selling points for DOM
(raison d'etre, even) -- no matter the language, you
know the API. I thought it was an urban legend (portal
theory for coders), but I guess it isn't. ;-)

> I think it's worth pointing out at this stage that
> JavaScript  
> programmers don't appear to seek or design
> alternatives to DOM at all.

Part of the reason of which probably is that, since
DOM  was created FOR Javascript (standardized what
Netscape had built for its needs), essentially, it's
not quite as painful with it than it is with
statically typed languages like Java or C#.
Also, JS programmers are at the mercy of browser
platform, so they can't really switch very easily,
compared to other platforms (yes, there is at least
one xml-parser-in-js, and no, it's not very viable to
write complex parsers like conformat xml-parser in
language like js).

So all in all it's not much of a surprise that they
won't be looking for other XML processing APIs (but
will try to use simpler approaches, if anything,
simple key/value pairs, or JSON).

Most Java alternatives (with the exception of XOM)
were created to make better use of natural bindings
the language has, and same probably holds true for
other language-specific alternatives.

-+ Tatu +-


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