Re: [xsl] is xslt "canonicalizable" can it be canonicalized?

["John Lumley john@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On 8 Feb 2023, at 09:28, Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Note also, John Lumley made an attempt to write an XSLT3-to-XSLT2
translator, which for example converted xsl:iterate to a recursive template.
>
> Dealing with all the edge cases isn't easy.
For details of this see my Balisage paper
https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol15/html/Lumley01/BalisageVol15-Lumley
01.html

As Michael says, the edge cases are tricky and this was only really exercised
on a large bdocument renderingb XSLT application, so it was sufficient for
that programbs needs but probably not much more. (It certainly didnbt
handle arrays or higher-order functions and simulated single-level map items
with a pair of tunnelled variables).

The big issue is perhaps not the XSLT translation, but having to parse and
modify XPath expressions (e.g. lifting out let clauses into XSLT variables).
At that time I used a parser in XSLT that was generated by Gunther
Rademacherbs ReX parser generator.

John Lumley