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XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns

• To: "James Fuller" <james.fuller@o...>
• Subject: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• From: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>
• Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 14:54:15 +0100
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <CNEHJIJMDHDIGIPHFEBLOEIJCLAA.james.fuller@o...>
• Organization: Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd
• References: <CNEHJIJMDHDIGIPHFEBLOEIJCLAA.james.fuller@o...>
• Reply-to: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>

Hi Jim,

> lets be honest, Jeni, the silence from most users is mainly due to
> the investment in time to review the bewildering array of documents

Yes, and I think that's the same reason why W3C XML Schema got so far
before people started to complain about its complexity -- people won't
read the specs until they need to in order to use the technology, by
which time it's usually too late to change the technology into
something useful. (Though I guess that led to RELAX NG; perhaps
that's a route to follow...)

FWIW, I think that the spec to concentrate on is the XPath WD [1]. It
is quite long, but only about 1/4 of it is the real stuff (the rest
being appendices and issues). When you come to a bit that's hard to
follow or that you don't agree with, send a post to
public-qt-comments@w... pointing to that section and describing the
problems that you had understanding it or why you disagree with it.

We can't expect the WDs to be a tutorial for users, but implementers
are people too, as are the people who have to write the tutorials! If
people knowledgeable in XPath 1.0 can't understand the spec for XPath
2.0 then either the spec or the language, or both, needs to be
simplified.

I got the impression that Uche (living in interdimensional space as he
does) *had* read the specs, or at least scanned through them
sufficiently to get an idea of what they were doing, but even so
hadn't commented because he wanted to put together a concrete
proposal. While I agree that concrete proposals more likely to be
listened to than vague feelings of unease or diatribes against the W3C
XML Schema data type set (for example), the juggernaut is fast
approaching the cliff, so it's probably a good idea to try to hit the
brakes now, even if we're not sure how exactly to navigate to the
bridge.

Of course I might be overplaying the situation, and all y'all might
be, if not perfectly content, at least happy enough to live with
whatever comes out at the end of the process. If that's how you feel,
that's fine. But if it isn't, you really need to speak up.

Cheers,

Jeni

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
  • Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>

• References:
  • RE: limits of the generic
    • From: "James Fuller" <james.fuller@o...>

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