/* | |
* Copyright (c) 2000 World Wide Web Consortium, | |
* (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de | |
* Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All | |
* Rights Reserved. This program is distributed under the W3C's Software | |
* Intellectual Property License. This program 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 W3C License http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ for more details. | |
*/ | |
package org.w3c.dom; | |
/** | |
* <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>insertBefore</code> and <code>appendChild</code>. | |
* <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification</a>. | |
*/ | |
public interface DocumentFragment extends Node { | |
} |