[Springframework-developer] <property><value>

[Steve H. <sh...@at...>]

Hi, I am a big fan of spring, but I've noticed
the design of the spring beans xml file seems
overly verbose in a few places.  For example, 
the common case of a property entry with a single 
value:

<property name="password">
	<value>${db.pw}</value>
</property>

I think this would be more clearly expressed without
the value tag:

<property name="password">${db.pw}</property>

Obviously this would mean less finger typing, but
I think the bigger advantage would be readibility,
especially in cases where those 15 characters force
a line break.

I tested adding support for this and it is possible
to do in a backward compatible way with just a small
change to XmlBeanDefinitionParser.java.  Unfortunately
the required change to spring-beans.dtd seems as if
it would have to be significant (allow ANY inside property) 
because of the dtd rules for mixed content.

A cleaner approach would probably be to define a separate,
alternative dtd and parser (ConciseXmlBeanDefinitionParser ?).
Additional elements could probably be eliminated at the same 
time (<map><entry><value> comes to mind).

Thoughts?

Steve