[xsl] XSLT-related Links/News of Interest

["M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Couple snippets of info that seem worth pointing out,

via Oleg Tkachenko @ http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000662.html

> But the whole new era of XSLT embedding is going to start when XSLT  
> finally becomes widely compilable into executable code. Next Visual  
> Studio (codename Orcas, expected later this year) will include XSLTC.EXE  
> - XSLT to MSIL compiler[1]. That would add another benefit - save on  
> XSLT compilation, which is time and resource hog.

via http://xqilla.sourceforge.net/HomePage

> XQilla is an XQueryb and XPath 2b library and command line utility  
> written in C++, implemented on top of the Xerces-Cb library. It is made  
> available under the terms of the Sleepycat licence and a BSD style  
> licence.

> XQilla is originally based on an open source project called Pathanb,  
> that was hosted by Decisionsoftb and implemented XPath 2. However,  
> XQilla has been developed and improved considerably from the Pathan code  
> base. A list of people involved in the development of XQilla can be  
> found here.

via Kurt Cagle @  
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/02/the_horserace_gets_exciting_xs.html

> Ibm sure this is going to get blogged almost immediately, but Ibll just  
> add my two cents here - Microsoft has formally announced that with the  
> publication of the XSLT 2.0 Recommendation the XML Team has commenced  
> working on a new XSLT 2.0 implementation that will be available as part  
> of the .NET platform, with the very real possibility that it will also  
> be folded into the Internet Explorer browser.

So that last part threw me, as this was the first time I had heard mention  
of XSLT 2.0 and IE.  But in researching this a bit further,

via http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2007/01/29/xslt-2-0.aspx#1584808

> We are discussing whether to implement XSLT2 in the native stack (MSXML3  
> and MSXML6).  The needs of IE are the biggest consideration (it uses the  
> native libraries), and we will definitely coordinate with the IE team.

With the recent news posted to this list and elsewhere regarding the  
recent infusion of extended support for EXSLT inside of Mozilla/Fx, I'm  
suddenly beginning to gain a sense that a brand new feature war is in the  
early stages of development amongst the browser vendors.  With  
Mozilla/Firefox making the browser matter again, resulting in a new  
onslaught of cross-browser/cross-platform functionality from MSFT in the  
form of WPF/e [XAML+CLR Lite][2] to take on XUL/Flex[aka Flash]  
head-to-head, it makes a lot more sense to consider the extended  
capabilities that EXSLT and XSLT 2.0 bring to the table for developers who  
want to build fat-client solutions made accessible via the browser.

And when you consider that a fairly substantial amount of the information  
we consume these days comes in the form of RSS/Atom (and this is  
increasing fairly dramatically), it certainly makes a whole lot of sense  
to provide extended capabilities in regards to the transformation of this  
data using the technologies best suited for transforming XML from one  
format into another.

Seems times are really beginning to get exciting these days in the land of  
XSLT* :)

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[1]  
http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2007/02/02/xml-features-in-the-february-ctp-of-visual-studio-orcas.aspx
[2] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358.aspx


--
/M:D

M. David Peterson
http://mdavid.name | http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354