Re: [xsl] xinclude in XSLT[2]

Subject: Re: [xsl] xinclude in XSLT[2]
From: Erik Wilde <net.dret@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:07:51 -0700
hello frans.

Do you know any location where this is described in detail? That is, exactly what parts are not possible to implement with XSL-T 2.0?

i don't think that there is a good description anywhere. i asked this question on xsl-list in august, but only received rather vague replies (http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200608/msg00450.html). so i had to go through xinclude and xslt, and there are two things that xinclude requires you to do, and that xslt does not let you do:


- http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/#notations
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/#unparsed-entities

the writing of these sections is not very clear, because it does not explicitly say that this MUST be done, but as i understand the text, this is what it means.

both of these things are not available in xslt, because the xpath node tree (or the xdm, depending on which version of xslt you are looking at) does not include this information.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#infoset
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-datamodel/#infoset-conformance

(in xdm, unparsed entities in the infoset may be included in the data model, but they are optional.)

so, because there is this discrepancy between xinclude and xslt, i think there should be at least an appendix in xinclude talking about this, because the idea of implementing xinclude with xslt is not that far-fetched. so if you also think that at least xinclude should be more explicit about no being xslt-friendly, then look at the latest draft http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PER-xinclude-20061003/ and send a comment to http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-xinclude-comments/ about including such an appendix in the next version of the specification.

personally, i think it would be much better to change the spec so that it is xslt-friendly (i.e., is defined in a way so that it can be implemented in xslt), but this may be too much to ask for for a minot version revision...

cheers,

erik wilde     tel:+1-510-6432253  -  fax:+1-510-6425814
     dret@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - http://dret.net/netdret
     School of Information (iSchool) - UC Berkeley (UCB)

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