Python & XML

The DOM Specifications

The Document Object Model is defined in a series of recommendations from the W3C. The specifications clearly cover XML (or we would not be describing them in this book), but they cover other things as well. The initial version of the DOM actually came from the HTML world; browser vendors invented it in various flavors as part of the APIs available to client-side scripts embedded in web pages. Since the vendors each implemented different interfaces, there was a call from content creators to have a standardized interface so their pages would work in at least roughly equivalent ways on the different browsers. Since the W3C is the best available shared ground on which the vendors could build a common specification, the DOM specifications are developed there.

All standards organizations face issues regarding the longevity of their specifications, and the W3C is no exception, no matter that it is quite young compared to more traditional standards groups such as ANSI and ISO. Given the relative youth of the W3C, it has had to deal with these issues almost from the start due to the rapid pace of development and the way standards are applied on the Internet. It does follow a traditional model however, rather than following the less formal (though highly effective) model of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Most of the W3C recommendations provide a version number of the major.minor style favored by software developers, perhaps due to the origins of the organization. ...