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On 2010 Apr 12, at 22:13, Michael Kay wrote: > This had the entirely > intentional consequence that the language is happily used (a) by people who > would otherwise be writing HTML and can see that XSLT is similar but does a > lot of the work for you I cannot see the 'similar', but I do honestly appreciate the tactical advantage that instance syntax gave the language. It's a pity that here, as in so many instances in life, tactics turned into strategy, and we end up stuck with DSSSL--. > and (b) by programmers who are sufficiently > open-minded to see the deep beauty of the language through its superficial > ugliness, while scaring off the Javascript kiddies who don't deserve such > good tools. Well... the deep attactions of a particular programming paradigm, very well hidden by the not-so-superficial ugliness of XSLT (which remains ugly for at least one layer after you abstract away the pointy brackets). I'm not seriously cheerleading for DSSSL here -- that battle's lost and won. I suppose all I'm really doing here is logging my gratitude to DSSSL (and thus to Clark) for opening my eyes to functional programming. I've never looked back. > In fact, using XML as the syntactic basis has many benefits. The most > notable one for me is that it is very easy to extend the language: whereas > XQuery goes through anguish every time a new construct is added, because of > the ambiguities and inconsistencies introduced by new grammar, XSLT is > infinitely extensible through new elements and attributes with no problems > at all. Yes, but these are benefits of functional languages in general. XSLT inherits those because it's one of a family of minimal-syntax lisp-like languages. All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk
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