Re: [xsl] Re: Re: ?XSLT Repository?

["cutlass" <cutlass@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

hello all,

> >
> > Of these three www.vbxml.com and xsltsl.sourceforge.net contain 100%
pure XSLT
> > solutions.

it is clearly stated, in EXSLT, where there is a particular implementation
in EXSLT; that is EXSLT,XSLT, M$, or FOURTHOUGHT parser, the focus of the
EXSLT effort is two-fold;

a) generating function definitions through EXSLT meta data format, seperate
from implementation.
b) generating implementations that adhere to functions definition ( at least
we try, hehe ).

in no way is EXSLT promoting less then 100% compatible solutions within
XSLT, one of the main aspects of EXSLT is if someone wants to create a
particular implementation, say in javascript, and use EXSLT syntax within
their code, they are making more portable code, in addition, implementators
(Fourthought python xslt parser,jd.xslt XSLT processor, LibXSLT for gnome
parser, SAXON parser all implement some EXSLT functions and hopefully will
go the whole hog...someday ) are building in these functions to make things
portable across parsers.

> > All three are limited and incomplete, are created by small groups of
people and
> > therefore much more needs to be accomplished.

i know that the EXLST effort initially involved a fairly diverse group
within XSLT community, but i think that all specs suffer from the bias of
their creators ?

 In addition, now that standard bodies such as OASIS and W3 are above the
waterline and much more accessible to the dev community at large we tend to
expect to standardize everything or at least spark off another process to
create a new specification, or in this case a new library; a quick look at
the W3 home page confirms this. The W3 is suffering from the success of xml
core spec, vastly divergent groups can work away on specs, knowing that they
will be able to integrate with other efforts, this is good, but when a new
web developer is presented with XML,XSLT,RELAXNG,RDF,SOAP,SVG to develop
with frankly they get a little lost, which is the primary reasoning for
developing libraries of functions for immediate use.

> > I think that these examples show why a W3C-developed Standard XSLT
Template Library
> > would be an extremely valuable and useful (self-implementing)
specification.

a pure XSLT library is more tactical in scope, its something that is
immediately useful with respect to creating XSLT, but i don't think its an
OASIS or W3 effort, its a project at sourceforge probably, with the dev
community at large adding to it. Though (as the people from all these
efforts full well now ), it tends to be a small group that actually submit
implementations, not to mention coordinating engineering stds, etc.

before embarking on creating a library, i for one would like to see some
things added/edited/deleted to XSLT 2.0, based on the learning of these
efforts.

btw it seems to be time again to start up discussion of XSLT 2.0 with
respect to this thread ( everyone back from vacation .... ), can anyone from
W3 comment on progress re XSLT 2.0, and also resend draft req again, i cant
seem to find it, in the lovely new XSLT generated W3 page.

cheers, jim fuller


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