Re: XSLT/XPATH jargon

Subject: Re: XSLT/XPATH jargon
From: David_Marston@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 13:50:06 -0500
Having read through the specs linearly and in various random directions, I
can certainly highlight jargon that should be on the jargon list. I defined
a couple below and I apologize for not having the time to define them all.
I see good momentum on this topic, so I hope that the blank entries here
will inspire others to contribute.

The spec says, "The value is a result tree fragment equivalent to a
node-set containing just a single root node having as children the sequence
of nodes produced by instantiating the template." I hope that sentences
like this convince us that a jargon list is needed.

ATTRIBUTE SET
COPY a NODE vs. COPY a RESULT TREE FRAGMENT
CURRENT NODE LIST
CURRENT TEMPLATE RULE
ENTITY
EXPANDED NAME
FORMAT (transitive verb): In XSL, the only items that get "formatted" are
numbers. (See section 12.3 of the spec.)
IMPORT vs. INCLUDE
INSTANTIATING a TEMPLATE
KEY: A scheme for having several lookup tables, each having its own
keyspace name. The function named "key" accepts the name of a keyspace and
a key to be looked up within that keyspace, and it returns a node-set
(q.v.) comprising the nodes that the key points to. Typically, the key is a
string constant and only one node is returned, but multi-node inputs and
outputs are possible. When declaring a keyspace, you tell the processor to
"use" some attribute or child (or similarly locatable sub-node) as the key
for each eligible node, and typically you would want to "use" something
that is unique for each node. (See section 12.2 of the spec, which also
includes reasons why keys are more flexible than IDs.)
LITERAL RESULT ELEMENT
LRE: see LITERAL RESULT ELEMENT
MATCH PATTERN: see PATTERN
MODE: A way to segregate templates (q.v.) so that they will only be
considered when the XSLT processor is "in [a certain] mode" by way of
xsl:apply-templates being invoked with the mode specified by name. This is
presented as the means for applying more than one template to an input
node. (See section 5.7 of the spec, which is terse.)
NAMESPACE
NODE-SET
PARAMETER
PATTERN
PRECEDENCE vs. PRIORITY
QUALIFIED NAME
RULE: see TEMPLATE
TEMPLATE
TOP-LEVEL ELEMENT
UNPARSED ENTITY
VARIABLE

David Marston
(of the LotusXSL Team)


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