Re: [xsl] keys and idrefs - XSLT2 request?

Subject: Re: [xsl] keys and idrefs - XSLT2 request?
From: Jeni Tennison <jeni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 11:29:51 +0100
David,

> Since mathematicians really like to argue, you should make a
> distinction between what I'm arguing (which is more or less the
> above) and what I believe to be true (which may be something
> entirely different).

Don't worry, I know that what you really *believe* is that XSLT would
be better off as a mathematically pure functional language without
having to worry about real-world applications, or even XML, ideally ;)
Likewise, I don't really give two hoots about support for XML Schema
support in XSLT 2.0 aside from the fact that it will make XSLT that
much more complicated, such that I get more money from writing things
trying to explain it :)

> But my question is _who_ required it and why? It seems at best a
> "nice to have" feature if it could be added easily, and at worst an
> intrusive aspect that will cause real compatibility problems between
> XSLT systems using schema-validating and non-validating parsers.
>
> Is it a requirement that comes from W3C internal politics, or is it
> a requirement that comes from real users?

Put it this way - it was just about the only requirement that I saw on
the XSLT or XPath Requirements that wasn't something that I'd seen
asked about here. But on the other hand, we would only see questions
about XML Schema and XSLT asked here if people were using XML Schema,
and at the point the Requirements came out, XML Schema wasn't a Rec,
so it isn't that surprising. And I bet that some people write to
xsl-editors to ask for XSLT features, rather than moan about it on
XSL-List ;) I note that we're beginning to see questions about XML
Schema here now. I'd also argue that it's the job of the W3C to
predict user requirements as well as respond to them.

The requirements that I've seen in questions and comments here have
been:

 - support for the built-in simple data types
   (which we all agree on)
 - getting attribute default values
   (of course)
 - getting a list of possible enumerated values for attribute values
   (think how useful that could be when doing grouping)
 - matching elements by type
   (however much you want to deny it)

Admittedly the requests aren't as frequent as those for grouping or
dynamic XPath expressions, but they are there.

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/


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