[XML-SIG] DOM Extension Proposal

[Dieter Maurer]

Mike Olson writes:
 > Paul Prescod wrote:
 > > 
 > > Insofar as the DOM does not address Python's syntax overloading, it does
 > > not say what we must do in our overloading.
 > > 
 > > I propose that we extend the DOM with a new type AttributeList that is a
 > > subclass of NamedNodeMap:
 > > 
 > > It would override __getitem__ to return the *value* of the reference
 > > attribute node instead of a (often useless and annoying) attribute node
 > > object.
 > 
 > We inherit NamedNodeMap from UserDict now so we are not too far off. 
 > However, we do return the Attribute node.  I suppose we could override
 > this to return just the value of the node.
 > 
 > Anyone else's thoughts?
It will break some code.

However, Unicode handling will in any case require some changes to
existing code. Therefore, this is a good time to make any
changes that seems to be worth.


I would like to stress, however, that all DOM specified functions
and attributes should behave as specified in DOM.
In our case: while "attributes[name]" may well return 
the attribute's value, the DOM functions "item" and "getNamedItem"
should of cause return "Node".


Dieter