Re: [xsl] ANNOUNCE: Petition to withdraw xsl:script from XSLT 1.1

Subject: Re: [xsl] ANNOUNCE: Petition to withdraw xsl:script from XSLT 1.1
From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 20:29:25 +0100
"Clark C. Evans" wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
> > Your text is so exhaustive that it's difficult to agree with
> > all the bullet points ;=)
> 
> Thank you Eric.  I think the same comment holds within
> the group of primary petitioners.  Not everyone agrees
> with every point made.  It is the 'sum of the points
> which is important.

Yes, of course !

> > > 1. The XSLT specification clearly states XSLT is not
> > > intended as a completely general-purpose XML transformation
> > > language.  XSLT is a special purpose language and should be
> > > maintained as such.  Much like structured query language, we
> > > think the general purpose languages should embed XSLT, not
> > > the other way round.
> >
> > "Embed" reminds me of embedded SQL C, a widely used and, IMO, very
> > broken combination with many limitations that made it almost impossible
> > to write object oriented or even structured code and I hope we will
> > never see embedded XSLT in this way...
> 
> In '93 I had to personally maintain thousands of lines of
> SQL Embedded In C.  It was a far better solution than
> most at the time, and this served as a stepping stone for
> "real" report-writers, etc.  Which, as far as my thinking
> goes, do infact embeed SQL and have not impeeded the the
> portability of SQL.  While, I feel report specific constructs
> within SQL would have seriously hindered SQL portability.

I hope I am not too heavily biased by the RDBMS vendor I was working for
at that time, but I remember many constraints such as cursors being
considered as static variables that had a huge impact on the programming
style that did not exist when you were using the native APIs that where
roughly similar to ODBC or JDBC.

The basic problem of embedding a language into another is the mixing of
instructions with different scopes...

To come back to to XSLT embedding XSLT within a general purpose language
would be as bad an idea as embedding the general language within XSLT
(i.e. xsl:script) and IMHO, the clean way to do it is rather through the
usage of the function call (or corresponding feature) of each language.

Eric

> > And in both cases, the combination "code+xslt" is language
> > dependent making it rather weird to say that one would be
> > portable when the other is not.
> 
> IMHO, We were only talking about keeping the XSLT portable... ;)
> 
> Clark
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

-- 
See you in Austin (Knowledge Technologies 2001)
              http://www.gca.org/attend/2001_conferences/kt_2001/mon.htm
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


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