RE: XSL Requirements (was: Microsoft extensions to XSL)

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Oren Ben-Kiki wrote:
>
> > As Didier PH Martin (mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) correctly
> pointed out, a
> > pattern matching language is never sufficient by itself to do general
> > structural transformations.
>
> Right. But then, XSL is not intended as a general structural
> transformation language. Its a style language that includes the ability
> to do some transformation as part of the styling step.

So, if the transformation part is minimal why redo an new language and not
keep and improve CSS? Is it because CSS do not use the <> tagging markup and
XSL does it?

>
> > He's also correct in that it would have been
> > interesting to start with a procedural language (say,
> JavaScript) and add
> > pattern matching facilities to it, instead of starting with a pattern
> > matching language and adding procedural hooks to it.
>
> You mean, like Spice?

Chris, I tried to do a research on the Web on Spice and I got, you guess
what? hundreds of links to spice girl sites :-) Do you have any link to a
site explaining or providing download for Spice? This would help us to
understand your analogy to this language.

>
> > The benefits of XSL's approach is that the simple things are less
> > intimidating then they would have been in a souped-up
> JavaScript approach.
>
> Yes. While a programattic approach always in theory yeilds more power,
> this is rather like a customer looking to buy a wordprocesso and being
> sold a C compiler "now you can write whatever you want ... in theory ...

So, what's your point here? we should stick to style processing only? And do
not address the issues of transformation? So why redo an new language if it
is nearly identical to what CSS provides?

So, to help us, understand your point of view. Explain why we should redo a
new style sheet language with minimal transformation capabilities and not
keep and improve CSS.

Have a good day and think about it ;-)
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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