Re: Microsoft's take on XSL

Subject: Re: Microsoft's take on XSL
From: Francis Norton <francis@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 16:46:23 +0100

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> 
> Julian Reschke writes:
>  > on a similar question in microsoft.public.xml, I got:
>  >
> is it my imagination, or is this pure blather?
> 
>  > > XSL syntax and interpretation issue.  There are also subtle things in the
>  > > XML language and in the DOM that will unlikely be fully compatible -- this
>  > > is due to ambiguity in the w3c specs and the fact that true 100%
>  > > cross-platform compatibility is never achievable anyway.
> 
> what *are* they talking about? can someone sympathetic to them explain
> what the "ambiguities" in XML might be?
> 
>  > > The migration story for XSL is that we will continue to support the IE5.0
>  > > XSL namespace with the IE5 behavior and then we will also support the new
>  > > XSLT namespace with the XSLT defined behavior.  Arn't namespaces wonderful
> 
> and this.  my style sheet says
> 
>   xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/XSL/Transform/1.0'
> 
> so my things start "<xsl:", just like Microsoft's do. are they saying
> that instead I will do
> 
>   xmlns:xsl='http://microsoft.com/XSL/Transform/1.0'
> 
> ??? I could understand it if they said i could do
> 
>   xmlns:msxsl='http://microsoft.com/XSL/Transform/1.0'
> 
> and then write
> 
>  <msxsl:template>
> 
> but presumably they *don't* mean that.
> 
> Can anyone offer a realistic way they might be going to dig themselves
> out of the hole they dug by implementing a draft recommendation in a
> production tool?
> 

Having used the IE5 for XSL, I may be able to parse the suggestion above
- my stylesheets all had to use the namespace 
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl"; rather than
xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/XSL/Transform/1.0'. So if they provide the
new behaviour for the new namespace this strikes me as quite reasonable,
though I'm not convinced about the "ambiguity in the w3c specs and the
fact that true 100% cross-platform compatibility is never achievable
anyway" comment - presumably they commented on these ambiguities in
their responses to the relevent working draft?

Francis.
-- 
Francis Norton.

Air Rage - a "flight *and* fight" reaction?


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