Re: [xsl] xsl compact syntax using xquery

[Michael Sokolov <msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ah, no!   That looks like the thing I was talking about; I'll have to 
read about it.

Thanks - glad I asked :)

-Mike

On 3/30/14 12:19 PM, Imsieke, Gerrit, le-tex wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Are you aware of John Snelsonbs Transform.xq?
> http://archive.xmlprague.cz/2012/files/xmlprague-2012-proceedings.pdf 
> (p.171)
> https://github.com/jpcs/transform.xq
>
> Gerrit
>
> On 30.03.2014 18:00, Michael Sokolov wrote:
> > Some recent comments on this list about XSLT compact syntaxes got me
> > thinking.  Why not use XQuery as a compact syntax for XSLT? XQuery's not
> > really great as a transformation tool since it lacks XSLT's declarative
> > rule-matching engine.
> >
> > But with functional extensions to XQuery, I think we could build that,
> > either in XQuery itself, or as a processor extension.  It shouldn't
> > require any language changes to get something useful. XSLT templates
> > could be represented as associations of path expressions and XQuery
> > functions.
> >
> > It might look something like this:
> >
> > <xsl:template match="//foo" priority="2">...</xsl:template>
> >    =>
> > xsl:template ("//foo", function () { ... }, 2)
> >
> >
> > <xsl:stylesheet> ... templates ... </xsl:stylesheet>
> > =>
> > let $default-mode := xsl:stylesheet ($templates, ...)
> >
> > It might be simplest to make all modes explicit?
> >
> > <xsl:apply-templates select="xyz" />
> > =>
> > xsl:apply-templates (xyz, $default-mode)
> >
> >
> > In an ideal world, there could be a compact syntax that represents all
> > of some version of XSLT.
> >
> > Some differences that might be difficult to paper over:
> >
> > Templates accept named parameters with default values, while functions
> > only allow positional
> > parameters and all must be provided in every invocation.
> >
> > I think a "translator" from XSLT to XSLT-Q (?) could supply defaulted
> > parameter values in the apply-templates calls; this would lose some of
> > the compactness benefit, but preserve the semantics.
> >
> > Tunnel parameters don't have any analogue in XQuery.  I don't see how to
> > provide that feature in XQuery without language extensions, but maybe
> > you have an idea, Dmitre?  You always seem to be able to achieve a lot
> > with very little.
> >
> > There must be some other XSLT instructions that aren't directly
> > available in XQuery: xsl:key, xsl:result-document, but I think these
> > could probably provided as XQuery functions in some way, without I
> > admit, having really thought through all the implications.
> >
> > I'm idly contemplating trying to hatch a proof-of-concept of some sort.
> > I'm counting on the wisdom of this list to deter me from wasting my time
> > on a terrible idea.  On the other hand perhaps it is a great idea and
> > somebody else will be inspired to implement it, saving me the trouble :)
> > What do you think?
> >
> > -Mike