I expect this article will get very few replies, indeed. :-p

A few weeks ago, I had this big block of XBL using a DOM range to show a set of nodes, and a DOM document fragment to hold the same set of nodes while the nodes were “hidden” from the user. It was really clunky, though, and a little hard to manage.

To clean it up a bit, I decided to introduce a new module, RangeFragment.jsm. The idea is simple: when you want to hide the set of nodes, you call rf.toFragment(). When you want to show them, you call rf.toRange().

I wrote this for both my <markup:repeat/> and <markup:children/> elements, but based on the hg diff, it doesn’t look like I actually removed or simplified very much. The reorg was only about making it easier to implement and test what I’m working on.

Sadly, when I went to look at the to-do list for Verbosio, this was so small a functionality change that it didn’t rate a spot on the list.

Oh, well. Maybe someone else will find a good use for an object that lets you switch from DOM range to document fragment and back.