Re: About the source library

Subject: Re: About the source library
From: Norman Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 14:11:21 -0400
/ "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> was heard to say:
| a) XSL lacks a procedural language. Actually the "function" support is
| insufficient for a lot of tasks. Just take an example from this morning.
| Someone posted a DSSSL script that removes trailing spaces. XSL won't be
| able to do that until complete integration of a procedural language or an
| expression language (the actual JavaScript inclusion is too limited)

My recent experiences writing XSL stylesheets for DocBook
(http://nwalsh.com/docbook/xsl) leave me less concerned about
this than I used to be. XSL's more expressive selection syntax
reduces the need for procedural programming. And recursive calls
to named templates can do quite a lot ;-)

| b) You'll never be able to transform SGML documents. XSL is for XML only.

Nonsense. XSLT is a tree-to-tree transformation language. There's
no reason an XSL processor couldn't load SGML documents and process
them.

| Off course if we make the inference that SGML will disappear and that XML
| will cover the planet. This feature is obsolete and unnecessary. And we'll
| also have to make the inference that Hytime will disappear and that topic
| maps will be a death born child.

What features of HyTime are not possible in XML?  Remember, XML is SGML.

| elements. The question is: how long will it take for XSL to have a full
| expression language or that a procedural language like JavaScript can have
| full access to the document's elements? Or will it ever do?

You've got pretty full access now.

                                        Cheers,
                                          norm
-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx>      | I plead contemporary insanity.
http://nwalsh.com/                 | 


 DSSSList info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist


Current Thread