Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?

Subject: Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?
From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:53:56 -0800
On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 8:02 AM, davep <davep@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> <guesses> Few users will get into more than 1/3 of xpath 3.0 with any level
> of understanding,
> primarily due to complexity, which I see as a negative aspect. For every
> Dimitre there
> are 101 others who will stare at the spec, shrug and go back to 2.0 or even
> 1.0</guess>

OK, I'll change my name, if this is the problem :)

More seriously, Dave, I believe that none of us are in a position to
summarize the opinion of the XSLT programmers audience *as a whole*.
We need facts in order to track this. Jim Fuller's poll is a step in
this direction.

I have observed the XSLT users of StackOverflow for several years.
While 4 years ago most of them needed help for elementary XSLT 1.0
questions, this audience has now matured to such extent that only few
questions are tagged "xslt-1.0" --probably less than 10% of all XSLT
questions. Recently I have been witnessing the fact that more and more
people who say they are XSLT newbies tag their questions as
"xslt-2.0".

I believe newbies are attracted to XSLT 2.0 because it allows them to
do many tasks, such as grouping and text processing in a simpler way,
avoiding the need for tricks that XSLT 1.0 requires.

I expect the same process of XSLT 3.0 adoption to happen gradually.

As for free vs paid, would you buy yourself the cheapest clothes and
shoes? The cheapiest instruments? My own observations are that bying
cheap is generally more expensive than buying the most
needed/appropriate. This isn't just my oppinion -- there are serious
scientific results confirming this statement.

To summarize:

1. Programmers are intelligent and value their time and money in
development and maintenance of XSLT applications.

2. Concrete facts (mentioned above) show that XSLT 2.0 is becoming
more and more attractive to the programmer's community.

3. There are no reasons why XSLT 3.0 wouldn't have the same acceptance
process. Apart from attracting initially the "super-users", XSLT 3.0
will accelerate the acceptance of XSLT 2.0 for the majority of the
people who haven't yet made the switch from XSLT 1.0.



-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
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To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk
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To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the
biggest mistake of all
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Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
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You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what
you're doing is work or play
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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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Typing monkeys will write all Shakespeare's works in 200yrs.Will they
write all patents, too? :)
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I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

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