XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[jcowan AT reutershealth.com]

Elliotte Rusty Harold scripsit:

> That's not going to happen. Wrong side of 80/20. Excessively 
> configurable APIs are confusing, hard to learn, and hard to use. I 
> will pick one approach or the other. Anyone who needs the alternative 
> behavior can simply call setBaseURI after detaching the node. The 
> question is what's the more sensible default.

In that case, the sensible default is to freeze the base URI on detaching
(any kind of detaching, including removeChild and replaceChild).
Having the base URI right is potentially essential to getting the
semantics of its character content and attribute values correct.

I think it is too confusing to have one rule for Nodes built by Builder
and another for Nodes created directly by the application.  One rule
should apply to all.

It would be good to add a clearBaseURI() method to remove the base URI.
I'm not sure what this does if the node has a parent.

I'm not sure how I/O interacts with the base URI.  Presumably, Builder
should set the base URI whenever an xml:base attribute is found.  Is the
attribute left in the attribute list or removed?  Likewise, when does
Serializer insert xml:base attributes?

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"Kill Gorgûn!  Kill orc-folk!           John Cowan
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