DocumentFragment.h

// -*- mode:C++; tab-width:2; c-basic-offset:2; indent-tabs-mode:nil -*- 
//
// Copyright (C) 2000-2005 by Roger Rene Kommer / artefaktur, Kassel, Germany.
// 
// This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
// modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL).
// 
// 
// This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.	 See the 
// License ACDK-FreeLicense document enclosed in the distribution
// for more for more details.
// This file is part of the Artefaktur Component Development Kit:
//                         ACDK
// 
// Please refer to
// - http://www.acdk.de
// - http://www.artefaktur.com
// - http://acdk.sourceforge.net
// for more information.
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// $Header: /cvsroot/acdk/acdk/acdk_xml/src/org/w3c/dom/DocumentFragment.h,v 1.8 2005/02/05 10:45:37 kommer Exp $
/*
  Documentation:
  Copyright (c) 2004 World Wide Web Consortium,
 
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for
  Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This
  work is distributed under the W3C(r) Software License [1] in the hope that
  it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
  warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 
  [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
*/

#ifndef org_w3c_dom_DocumentFragment_h
#define org_w3c_dom_DocumentFragment_h

namespace org {
namespace w3c {
namespace dom {

using namespace acdk::lang;

ACDK_DECL_INTERFACE(DocumentFragment);

/**
 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is a "lightweight" or "minimal" 
 * <code>Document</code> object. It is very common to want to be able to 
 * extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a 
 * document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a 
 * document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object 
 * which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for 
 * this purpose. While it is true that a <code>Document</code> object could 
 * fulfill this role, a <code>Document</code> object can potentially be a 
 * heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is 
 * really needed for this is a very lightweight object. 
 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is such an object.
 * <p>Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children 
 * of another <code>Node</code> -- may take <code>DocumentFragment</code> 
 * objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the 
 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> being moved to the child list of this node.
 * <p>The children of a <code>DocumentFragment</code> node are zero or more 
 * nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of 
 * the document. <code>DocumentFragment</code> nodes do not need to be 
 * well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules 
 * imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top 
 * nodes). For example, a <code>DocumentFragment</code> might have only one 
 * child and that child node could be a <code>Text</code> node. Such a 
 * structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML 
 * document.
 * <p>When a <code>DocumentFragment</code> is inserted into a 
 * <code>Document</code> (or indeed any other <code>Node</code> that may 
 * take children) the children of the <code>DocumentFragment</code> and not 
 * the <code>DocumentFragment</code> itself are inserted into the 
 * <code>Node</code>. This makes the <code>DocumentFragment</code> very 
 * useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the 
 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> acts as the parent of these nodes so that 
 * the user can use the standard methods from the <code>Node</code> 
 * interface, such as <code>Node.insertBefore</code> and 
 * <code>Node.appendChild</code>.
 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407'>Document acdk::lang::Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification</a>.

  @author Roger Rene Kommer
  @version $Revision: 1.8 $
  @date $Date: 2005/02/05 10:45:37 $
*/
ACDK_INTERFACE class ACDK_ORG_XML_PUBLIC DocumentFragment
: implements Node
{
  ACDK_WITH_METAINFO(DocumentFragment)
public: 
};

} // namespace dom
} // namespace w3c
} // namespace org
#endif //org_w3c_dom_DocumentFragment_h