Re: [Element Traversal LC] access to element by index

Hi, Daniel-

Daniel Glazman wrote (on 3/28/08 3:15 PM):
> 
> Doug Schepers wrote:
> 
>> Since Selectors API is meant to be a more comprehensive API than 
>> Element Traversal, I would expect it to be able to deal with this more 
>> general use case Daniel mentions, and personally would prefer to 
>> increase the comprehensive functionality of that spec over Element 
>> Traversal, which is meant to be more lightweight.
> 
> Ah. Adding
> 
>   NodeList    childElements;
> 
> is not lightweight ? It's incredibly simple, totally coherent with
> what the DOM already offers, and web authors are perfectly used to
> NodeList.

I'm open to changing it, since as I said, I introduced that 
functionality in an earlier version of the spec, but removed it because 
of negative feedback, primarily from Björn Höhrmann and Maciej 
Stachowiak.  I had other feedback from Boris Zbarsky and Stewart Brodie 
that said linked lists could be implemented efficiently with clever 
coding, but I took that as weaker advocacy than the stronger objections. 
  I'll also note that while Stewart and Boris are active contributors to 
public-webapi, Björn and Maciej were WG members, and that played a small 
factor in my decision.

Maybe that was a bad design choice.

The question is, can we revisit it in light of existing implementations 
in JSR-280 and in deployed code in mobile devices?  At the very least, 
we would have to leave 'childElementCount', and add an additional 
nodeList (be it static or live).  At that point, yes, it does seem like 
it might be getting a little heavy, and may also lead to 
non-interoperable content.

I will liaison with JSR and with the SVG WG to see how they feel about 
this decision.  I can see both sides, so I'll abide by the will of the 
WebAPI WG and the dependent groups.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/2007Oct/0050.html

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG, CDF, and WebAPI

Received on Friday, 28 March 2008 20:11:45 UTC