[XML-SIG] Ugh! Why are DOM access methods spelled with a leading '_'?

[Jim Fulton]

Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> 
> > Mike Olson wrote:
> > >
> > > Jim Fulton wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Actually, the DOM can be mapped into a language in a manner that does
> > > > > not follow directly from the IDL and CORBA specs. That's why there is a
> > > > > formally defined java binding rather than just a reference to the IDL
> > > > > specs. Historically, though, 4DOM was really a CORBA tool so it really
> > > > > needed to follow the specs.
> > > >
> > > > Whatever we do, there needs to be a document somewhere that
> > > > says what the Python DOM mapping is, even if it is not
> > > > much more than a reference to the DOM IDL and the Python
> > > > binding.
> > >
> > > In 4DOM, we are actually moving away from __getattr__ (for speed).
> >
> > IMO, this is strong evidence that the Python DOM should
> > *not* use attributes for implementing the DOM/IDL attributes.
> 
> Not so fast.  We've mostly solved the speed problem.  And we could solve a
> good deal more of it by getting rid of accessor/mutator functions.

Could you elaborate on this? Who is we? I'm implementing a DOM 
for StructuredTextNG and I can't see a way to avoid using getattr if
I want to avoid circular references.  How have you solved the
speed problem for me?

In general, I'd like it to be relatively easy to implement DOM
on non-xml-specific objects that I want to process with DOM-aware
tools, like 4XSLT.  Requiring that these objects implement the 
DOM attributes as actual attributes or that the objects implement
getattr seems pretty burdonsome to me.

> This whole argument actually makes mandating only attributes more attractive
> to me.

I can live with whatever we decide (although I have no idea how we
go about coming to a decision ;), however, the discussion has
convinced me that the DOM API should map DOM attributes to
Python attributes. Sigh.

Jim

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