Re: Venting

[Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx]

Hi Keith.

*Your* arguement is quite reasonable. Personally I think there is enough
division already present in the spec for what you suggest to occur, backe
up back the fact that a vendor can already say parser A impliments the
transformative part of the XSL draft Rec. Others however are already
talking about XSL as an adjunct to some supposed XTL, and it's with their
arguments I have the greatest concern. I appreciate that you might desire a
greater degree of division between the two aspects, but can I ask you what
in your view the benefits of this would be to the styling language? Not
entrepreneurs, or parser marketeers, or educationalists, but to the utility
of the language in expressing the styling of an XML document, and it's
adoption by industry as a solution for transforming and formatting XML.

I am also concerned about the agendas of some of the "lobbiest" and that
their reasons have nothing to with the well-being of XSL as a style
language but the marketing of existing or future products.

Cheers
     Guy.





xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 02/10/99 05:26:40 PM

To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
Subject:  Re: Venting





Guy,
  I'm not suggesting abandoning or "pulling" anything from the XSL
standard. I think it would help XSL by allowing some people to focus on
one part and others to focus on another. Assuming that you are a
programmer you know that splitting a task into smaller sub-tasks helps
to accomplish the overall goal. I don't think any of us are suggesting
to get rid of FOs. I also understand that the FO portion of the XSL WD
is rather incomplete, and that eventually as it nears completion more
software supporting FO's will be available.
--Keith
Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Hi Keith.
>
> Yes he does make a very strong point with that.
>
> I would suggest however that it is early days for XSL, and as the
> transformative part of XSL is easiest to impliment it was bound to be the
> first.
>
> The arguement you're persuing is a bit like saying well none of the
browser
> manufacturers impliment that bit of HTML so maybe we should just pull it
> from the standard.
>
> I might point out that neither of the main browsers support CSS2, but
that
> doesn't stop it from being a good and valid standard. It might be some
time
> before they do fully comply to CSS2, but the fact that it's there means
> that preasure can be brought to bear on them to gradualy comply over
time.
> The arguement that suggests that because the standard isn't impliments,
it
> should be hacked up is a dangerous one for standards, especially when the
> standard isn't even out the door.
>
> There's now way that MS or NS will impliment XSL FOs until the standard
is
> out the door and written in stone, and nobody envisaged that they would.
>
> To be frank, before the standard is ratified to say it's not implimented
so
> we should drop it, is a little rediculous.
>
> Cheers
>      Guy.
>
> xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 02/09/99 10:27:14 PM
>
> To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
> Subject:  Re: Venting
>
> Guy,
> Paul makes an excellent point since most of the XSL processors only
> implement the "XTL" or tree construction portion of the XSL WD anyway. I
> am in favor of splitting the the spec or at least having a further
> clarified specification that treats the transformation and formatting as
> two separate entities.
> Most of the implementors of the XSL processors apparently have felt this
> way from the start in my opinion since some are working on the
> Transformation process and others are working on the "FO" section.
> --Keith
> Paul Prescod wrote:
> >
> > Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi.
> > >
> > > Yes I would rather see 100 XTL languages rather than see XSL sullied.
> >
> > Sullied is a pretty vague word. Most of us in favor of separating out
the
> > transformation language believe that the XSL style language would be
> > stronger after that change.
> >
> > > If you want to discuss the future of XTL, please go form an XTL
mailing
> > > list.
> >
> > The XSL transformation langauge is currently a part of the XSL
> > specification. This is the most appropriate place to discuss it unless
> > that changes.
> >
> > I would venture that far and away most of the people in this fora are
> > using the transformation language without the formatting objects. Would
> > you really like all of them to "go away?"
> >
> > --
> >  Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
> >  http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco
> >
> > "Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did,
> > but she did it backwards and in high heels."
> >                                                --Faith Whittlesey
> >
> >  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>
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