Re: Grand Unification Theory

Subject: Re: Grand Unification Theory
From: Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:54:05 -0500
Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> 
> * Duane Nickull
> |
> | I am for unification of XSL and XPointer.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is such a good idea. I used to support this idea,
> too, but after I've seen the uses that XSL patterns are being put to
> I'm not so sure any more.

I see an XPointer as an XSL pattern that is restricted to a contiguous
range of nodes. So XPointer would be a subset of XSL.

The important question is whether the syntax could be restricted so that
the XPointer parser could know at "compile time" that only a character or
a range matches. For instance a/b would be illegal but a[1]/b[2] would be
legal (where a[x] had an "indexing" meaning). (it might be a smart move to
reserve square brackets for indexing and use something else like curly
brackets for other qualifiers)

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

By lumping computers and televisions together, as if they exerted a 
single malign influence, pessimists have tried to argue that the 
electronic revolution spells the end of the sort of literate culture 
that began with Gutenberg?s press. On several counts, that now seems 
the reverse of the truth.

http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/19-12-98/index_xm0015.html


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