XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

Wolfgang Hoschek wrote:


> Either that (output 1), or a list with a single XOM text node having no 
> parent, containing the concatenation of t1, t2 and t3 (output 2). The 
> problem is that neither output is satisfactory from a certain angle. The 
> only really satisfactory output would be a single XOM text node having 
> the parent of t1, t2 and t3, containing the concatenation of t1, t2 and 
> t3 (output 3). But output 3 isn't possible with XOM unless the texts 
> were merged before passing them into XPath because XPath is a read-only 
> model.
>
> A user might expect output 1, 2 or 3 when matching on text = 
> "helloworldnux", depending how he looks at the problem. What do we do? 
> Any ideas what other engines output when running over external tree models?

I disagree. I think output 1 is clearly correct. Anything else is 
suboptimal. If a user is confused by output 1, then it is because they 
are confused by XPath and the unfortunate impedance mismatch between 
XPath and XOM. The more I think about this the more I'm convinced that 
output 1 is right.

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim