Bug 74670 – Remove legacy node types

• Component: DOM
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Ojan Vafai]

http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/domcore/raw-file/tip/Overview.html

DOM4 removes a bunch of node types. We should remove them from webcore.

  const unsigned short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2; // historical
  const unsigned short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4; // historical
  const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5; // historical
  const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12; // historical

There's already bug 74371 for attributes. 

It appears that ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE can only be created in XML documents by script calling document.createEntityReference. I think we can safely remove them. This will also have the added benefit of improving appendChild/insertBefore performance.

I haven't looked into cdata_section or notation.

[Chris Dumez]

The following were already removed:
  const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5; // historical
  const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12; // historical

I believe Anne plans to add CDATA_SECTION_NODE / ATTRIBUTE_NODE back into the DOM specification this month because no major browser has been able to drop them.

[Chris Dumez]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The following were already removed:
>   const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5; // historical
>   const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12; // historical
> 
> I believe Anne plans to add CDATA_SECTION_NODE / ATTRIBUTE_NODE back into
> the DOM specification this month because no major browser has been able to
> drop them.

Referring to Anne's recent comment on https://github.com/whatwg/dom/issues/102#issuecomment-236141842