Subject: RE: XSL as a better XPointer From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 13:34:08 -0400 |
Hi Micah, I think that the problem could be more political than practical. The two specs are developed by two groups and there is probably no mechanism in place to re-unite these worlds. I may be wrong, and I wish I am. This said, Yes both (Xpointers and XSL patterns) should be at least identical or one a subset of the other. In fact, you are right to say that there is a lot of similarities. Both organize their world with a name space. In that case, a hierarchical name space. This would make sense that we have, for documents organization a common name space convention. This is simple practical application of good knowledge management. We re-use the knowledge learned. I'll repeat to be clear, the main advantage of a common name space convention is knowledge re-use. Thus, if someone learned how to create a XSL query (i.e. a match in XSL) he or she learned at the same time a Xpointer convention. XPointers could express more complex relationship like document to document linkage but the basic rules would be the same. Now let's go a bit further. Why can we not use also the full XPointer name space in XSL? A XSL script would then be able to process multiple documents and build an output document form multiple source. Why not? I have even some concrete needs for this. So why these world with so much similarities are not unified? I have also the same question on some Win32 API. Why do I have different API for similar things. Simple answer, because different group created them. And each group creates its own world. If W3C resolve this political issue, we may have some chances to have some uniformity. I do not say that both group do not do their job, This is in fact totally the contrary. I am saying that if there is no mechanism in place to get uniformity of name spaces, there won't be any. When working on the design of XScripts I had to create a scheme for name space convention I turned to W3C specs and discovered a certain schizophrenic pattern here. If I take XPointers as name space I am loosing XSL name space convention. If I take XSL name space convention I am loosing XPointer convention. If I unify both world I get excommunicated from W3C as not respecting the specs. Is this what we call a catch 22? How to resolve it? Simple decision made by W3C: to have a group or have both group work with the same name space convention. Am I talking of utopia here maybe? I just hope that some people in W3C look at the problem and try to resolve it. Regards Didier PH Martin mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.netfolder.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Micah Dubinko Sent: Sunday, April 11, 1999 12:25 PM To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Steven_DeRose@xxxxxxxxx Subject: XSL as a better XPointer Hello all, Let me jump in to point out that there are many conceptual similarities between XSL patterns and XPointer. Also, the sky is blue. :-) My point is, it would be a shame to have two completely different specs with so much overlap. It would be a burden not only on the spec writers, but also on every implementer down the line. >From what I've heard, the main arguments against this sort of thing are 'XSL patterns are too simple' and 'XPointer is too complex'. So, how about 'XPointer Level 1' for the XSL spec and 'XPointer Level 2' for the heavy lifting? Jonathan Borden wrote: > Or in XSL patterns: > > //chapter[21]/v[12] > > XSL patterns are a better XPointer (less weight more filling...) Comments? .micah 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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