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Message-ID: <351FB1C90471D311BCC800508B0763693F63FE@d072043.sbc.com>
From: "HERRICK, CHUCK (SBCSI)" <CH6898@momail.sbc.com>
To: "'general@xml.apache.org'" <general@xml.apache.org>,
        general@jakarta.apache.org
Cc: cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org
Subject: RE: JDOM and Thank You :)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 13:02:14 -0500
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	charset="ISO-8859-1"

Gee, JDOM sounds just like Xerces and DOM.

Did you guys build JDOM because you found something frustrating about Xerces
and DOM?

If so, what was it?

Maybe it's just the cynic in me, but I'm always cautious
of "let's create yet another standard / api so I can 
put it on my resume and acquire instant fame and fortune"?

Note, I'm not saying that's the case here. Just curious.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Hunter [mailto:jhunter@acm.org]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 11:48 AM
To: general@jakarta.apache.org
Cc: general@xml.apache.org; cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: JDOM and Thank You :)


Ray Cromwell wrote:
> 
> Could you summarize at a 30,000ft level what JDOM does and why it is
> needed? I tried going to the web site, but there were no specs.

The web site now contains the slides from our presentation last night 
to the Mountain View JUG.  (See Brett's announcement below.)  These
slides address some of the high-level issues.

> Browsing the JavaDoc gave me the impression it's intended to allow
> I/O of XML from storage other than just text.

Yeah, it's always hard to learn the philosophy of an API from the
Javadocs.  :-)  Our goal is to be an easy and efficient API for reading,
manipulating, and writing XML data from Java.  The API is intuitive, 
and the implementation is lightweight and flexible.  

JDOM integrates well with DOM and SAX.  You can construct a JDOM
document using *any* DOM or SAX parser (plug in your favorite, we
default to Xerces).  We suggest building with the SAXBuilder right now
because it's faster than DOMBuilder, but we have plans for builders that
are faster still.  Notice you don't need to know any SAX to use
SAXBuilder.

You can also convert a JDOM document to any output format you want
including XML, a DOM tree, or SAX events.  For example, if an
application expected SAX as input, you'd just output the Document to 
SAX for that to work.  Very slick.  If you want it output to a database,
you just write a SQLOutputter that writes the document to a database.

> However, one thing concerned me was that the JavaDoc didn't say
> that their versions of Node, Element, et al, implemented the
> org.w3c.* interfaces. IMHO, any API that doesn't atleast implement
> the w3c interfaces is dead-on-arrival.

We don't implement the org.w3c interfaces, and aren't going to.  We're
not DOM and don't need to inherit DOM complexities and inefficiencies. 
As one of our beta testers said:

   Having used JDOM for serveral days now, I have found it much 
   simpler to work with over DOM and especialy SAX. JDOM just flows
   better for a Java programmer like myself and the code you end up 
   with is much cleaner. I like it ;-)

Here's Brett's announcement about new content on the site:

  Some changes have just been made to the website.  First, we've 
  updated the news page to reflect the upcoming press release. 
  Obviously, it's not out yet, so it's a placeholder that will soon 
  be filled in.

  I've also added Jason's and my slides from last night to the
  Documentation download page.  I'm working on getting a copy of 
  Acrobat writer, and as soon as I get that, I'll convert them to 
  PDFs.  For now, they are just in .ppt  (Sorry linux people - my 
  laptop can't read them either ;-) ).

  Also, I've added .tar.gz downloads for source, binaries, and docs, 
  and added a small file (antRun) to the source dist. so that JavaDoc
  builds correctly in Unix.

-jh-

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