I would like to see a very forgiving getdefault(). It
would even
return the default if the nodeid or the prop doesn't
exist at
all. It would certainly have simplified some of the
code for RFE     707235. Comments?

Richard: Seems reasonable. It shouldn't be called
"getdefault" though, as that is an existing builtin API
method and ours would be different. How about "safeget"
or similar?