[HtmlUnit] HTML DOM implementation

[Christian S. <chr...@ne...>]

Hello,

has anybody ever considered implementing a dedicated HTML DOM for use 
with HtmlUnit? Right now HU uses Xerces/Neko to parse the input and 
create an internal DOM. However, that DOM is only used by HtmlUnit to 
lookup structural information. Additionally, a parallel DOM is 
maintained that keeps the extra information required by Htmlunit, and 
there is a constant mapping between the two. Heres what I find:

1. theres no need to let Xerces create a HTML DOM, as it currently does. 
It would suffice to use a simple XML DOM, because that is all HtmlUnit 
requires (and uses). This would improve effciency during parsing, and 
could be achieved by configuring Neko accordingly.

2. there would be a really significant performance improvement, and 
simplification of the code, if the 2 DOMs would be unified into one. 
Basically this would require implementing the whole DOM interface in 
HtmlUnit - which isnt that hard.

I am considering to use HU in a load test scenario - thats why I am 
concerned about performance. I realize this may not be the case with 
many others.

comments?
Christian