BaseHandlerTag implementation question

[James Howe <jw...@allencreek.com>]

I have a question concerning the way the 
org.apache.struts.taglib.html.BaseHandlerTag class is implemented.  In 
particular, I'm wondering why the methods "prepareFocusEvents", 
"prepareTextEvents", etc. are private instead of protected.  I ran into 
this today because I wanted to build a custom "text" tag.  I was hoping to 
be able to make a simple extension to struts by subclassing TextTag and 
overriding the prepareTextEvents method to do some custom 
behavior.  Unfortunately, since prepareTextEvents is private, I can't do 
that.  I'm wondering if anyone can offer a good reason for making these 
methods private?

Thanks.