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

[Uche Ogbuji]

> I'll be willing to give on this, however, I assert that
> a decision isn't a decision unless it's published.
> 
> It doesn't help when the people who made the decision
> can't seem to remember what it was.

_Completely_ untrue.  Can you point me to a post where someone said they don't 
kow what the decision was?  I _can_ point you to posts where the consensus was 
summarized.  See, for instance

http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/1999-November/003281.html  (and 
following posts)

http://www.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/1999-November/003313.html

The whole affair started in the "4DOM future" thread and continued in the 
"foo.bar vs. foo.get_bar()", rounding out in the "CORBA compliance for the DOM 
in Python?" thread and other sundry conversations.


> Supposedly, the
> decision was that DOM attributes are accessed as ordinary
> Python attributes, as in::
> 
>   foo.nodeName

Yes.

> yet several people seemed to think that attributes are obtained
> via accessor functions:
> 
>   foo._get_nodeName()

Yes.  The decision was "both".  See the links.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +01 303 583 9900 x 101
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