[lxml-dev] lxml 1.3 annotate() behaviour for empty string data elements

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi Holger,

finally coming back to this.

jholg at gmx.de wrote:
> I just noticed that annotate() does not add type information to empty string elements when parsed:
> I know this happens due to the .text of the node being None in the 1st case instead of '' in the second case (which is lxml/ElementTree/libxml2 behaviour that bites me once and again).
> Still, I'd prefer to have annotate() provide all data elements with type information; after all, the element in question is treated as a StringElement (the default emtpy_data_class) anyway.

Well, since the default class is definable in the lookup class, I prefer
having it definable in annotate(), too. So I would add an "empty_type" keyword
argument where you can provide the Python type name as string.

Question: should this default to None or to "str"? I have no real preference
myself, though "str" would mean we annotate everything by default, so that
sounds better.

Stefan