[jdom-interest] Accessing Child Elements

[Peter V. Gadjokov]

 <<>> 
Ellioette wrote:

>I think the current behavior of JDOM with respect to namespaces is 
>correct and should not be changed. I am categorically opposed to ALL 
>the proposals that have been made in this thread. 

Well, I categorically disagree with the notion that the current
implementation is 'correct' but then again, that's why we're having
this discussion. Nevertheless, I'm finding the word 'categorically' a
little strong given the rather minimal changes in my last proposal. :)

>It is NOT true that you can assume that a child element shares the
>namespace of its parent. RDF and XSLT are just two common XML
>applications where this assumption is very frequently violated.

It is no more true (and I think a lot less practically useful) that
one can assume the child is in the empty namespace. I was proposing a
change to what, in either implementation, is a convenience method, not
an 'intrinsic' one. By convenience method I mean a method that is
implemented in terms of other public methods, whether convienience
methods or intrinsic ones. By this definition, all convenience methods
can be reduced to a set of intrinsic ones. We can argue back and forth
forever about which operation is more common - retrieval of an element
in the empty namespace or retrieval of an element in the parent's
namespace. The fact is, both implementations of the convenience methods
_have_ to make _some_ assumption.