Re: Quantifying MSXML3 support for XSLT

Subject: Re: Quantifying MSXML3 support for XSLT
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 09:30:01 +0100 (BST)
> David's letter could very well have been misconstrued to mean that
> the processor in discussion was based on an older version of
> the XSLT draft, when in fact it was not

Are you sure? It wasn't at all clear from the original poster's message
whether or not he had the MSXML3 update, and I suspect he had not.
The question I was trying to answer was
 "are XML schema XSL elements"

To which the answer is no but I thought I should expand slightly on
the possible meaning of "schema" hence the comment that you quote
below.

> In addition, it was difficult to judge the sincerity of the 
> comment that "XDR=Microsoft flavoured XML schema", but
> it would seem to imply that XDR is a competing peer of
> XML Schema

No it was just meant to imply that there are different notions of
schema. I only brought the thing up at all as I guessed that the
schema=xsl confusion was due to msxml bundling everything together.
I didn't mean to imply that it was bad to make such a bundle,
just that a beginner should be aware of which functionality he was
using, the schema validating parser, or the xsl system (or both).

> it was also irrelevant
> to the initiating question, and perhaps disingenuous;

Me, disingenuous, surely not:-)

If you look back on this list last time this came up
you'll see that I noted that really the only bad part about
Microsoft's original implementation (at the time) was that the
documentation is almost completely silent on which features were
extensions. But without implying any sort of blame to anyone
it is undeniably the case that IE5 XSL being (by now) not too similar
to the final recommendation has caused a lot of user confusion,
with beginners picking up microsoft documentation and trying it on xt or
(more commonly) picking up xslt documentation and trying examples in IE5.
This confusion accounts for a sizable proportion of the messages on this
list.


> While it's possible David had no
> such intent, it's quite likely that many read his comment
> to imply that XDR was created by Microsoft as an alternative
> to XML Schema. 

Anyone with access to a calendar could tell that wasn't the case.


> As for the official statements about the level of
> compliance in MSXML3 and expected arrival at 100%,
> I have sent out a query to people more qualified to
> make official statements and will let you know what
> I find.

Judging by hints let out by the microsoft folks on the newsgroup for the
msxml web release, then by the next release (soon) MSXML3 will be getting
pretty close (and have support for xsl:key which means it will be able
to steal some market share from xt :-)

David


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