RE: Venting

Subject: RE: Venting
From: Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 11:08:42 +0000
Hi Didier.

Thanks for indulging my outburst, it was indeed a bad day :)

I agree that the term "hijacking" is somewhat emotive, and maybe not the
best term I could have found, but not I feel wholy inappropriate. There are
several parties, some of which are commercial that are interested in the
transformative part of XSL but not the formatting that are only concerned
with the production of transformation parsers, not a style language for
XML.

I would call this hijacking because this forum is concerned with a style
language and specificaly XSL, not XML transformation in isolation. People
have been directed to other forums because what they're addressing is an
XPointer issue, and I feel the same is true of XTL. This isn't an XTL forum
it's an XSL forum. Yes transformation of XML is relevant to the forum, but
the killing of XSL in favour of XTL (and I do beleive that is the objective
of several participants) I view as hijacking ::shrug:: I respect their
right to express their opionion, just reserve the right to dislike it :)

As for why I feel the "status quo" should be maintained...

I beleive that transformation, and formatting are both essential to styling
and as such believe that both are relevant to a style language. I think a
style language without one or other is incomplete.

I feel that if XSL is split into XSL-T and XSL-F that XSL-F is doomed to
wither and die, as it is the most challenging certainly browser vendors to
impliment. XSL-F might have a future in print I don't know enough about
that market to speculate.

If XSL-F dies, then as a Web designer I must resort to two style languages
for a complete picture, XSL-T and CSS. This is less than ideal. I realise
that other needs may differ, but I've always been up-front about the fact
that I'm a Web designer and that my interests are in that area, my agenda
is quite clear.

If, as I beleive is the objective the transformative part of XSL is simply
pulled out and developed as XTL, I beleive that primary concerns in its
design will not be that of styling.

If proponets of XTL are looking for a plane to hijack I feel they might be
better off looking at XQL. I have only taken a very brief glance at it but
within the scope of XQL is the issue of a general transformative language.

I feel that the persuit of an XTL is best done as that.... XTL, not a
throttled XSL.

XQL is being mooted, based upon XSL pattern matching syntax, as will be
several other languages no doubt. If each of these new standard sought
instead to simply throttle XSL rather than persue their own agenda, XSL
would be doomed. Those with interests in a general XML query language
however have instead taken the course of pesuing their agenda under it's
own banner, rather than acting as a cuckoo and kicking the XSL eggs they
didn't like out of the nest.

In short XTL should be persued under the banner of XTL not XSL minus
formatting.





xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 02/09/99 06:49:42 PM

To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
Subject:  RE: Venting




HI Guy,
<YourComment>
People, wake-up, the forum is being hijacked.
</YourComment>
<Reply>
Guy,  I see that you got a bad Monday :-) People don't want to Hijack this
list, they just want a better future for XSL in general and resolve some
issues like:
[SNIP]

Take a bird view for a moment Guy. This is not Hijacking, this is active
participation and expression of a certain quality. Quality of thought is
not
solely reserved to paid membership to W3C. And the people express that XSL
should be seen in a broader perspective. So, I'll forget about the term
Hijacking and just keep that you don't want the formatting part removed
from
the spec. Its OK Guy, that's you opinion and we have all to respect it.
However, it would be useful to ear from you the reasons why you think that
the status quo should be preserved. We'll learn in the process.
</Reply>
Have a good day.
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com

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