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Re: Recently published W3C Working Drafts (long)

• To: Paul T <pault12@p...>
• Subject: Re: Recently published W3C Working Drafts (long)
• From: Christian Nentwich <c.nentwich@c...>
• Date: 21 Dec 2001 14:04:58 +0000
• Cc: Joe English <jenglish@f...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <005d01c189b4$b5b28a20$2cd0a340@paultx>
• References: <200112202258.OAA28095@d...> <005d01c189b4$b5b28a20$2cd0a340@paultx>

> I think that what they've done to XPath 2.0 would result 
> in slow and cumbersome engines that would be possibly 
> implemented only by a few big companies and because 
> XPath 2.0 requirements document (still)  has no word 
> 'update' in it, XPath alternatives would emerge next years.

Nevermind slow and cumbersome engines, how is anyone supposed to teach
this stuff to people? It was hard enough to teach XPath 1.0 to
non-programmers, but this almost looks like a programming language now.

I find it quite unbelievable how badly the W3C is managing the xquery,
xslt and xpath evolution. If someone handed you a piece of code that
separates its concerns so badly, you would send them back to refactor
it.

Instead of getting specifications that complement one another, we get
redundantly specified specs that are seriously complicated.. who's
supposed to keep an overview over all this?

And the backwards incompatibility of XPath 2.0 is an absolute
nightmare.. it doesn't exactly affect 'marginal' paths, it's going to
break a few of mine at least.

> I believe that XPath has to be refactored (current 'XPath' 
> is better to be called 'XSelect' ) and I'm working 
> on that right now. 

Way to go! :)


> Those, who are interested in re-designing XPath so that 
> it may become really 'XPath' ( The Path in The 'XML Three' ),
> not the interpreter for string operations or god-knows-what 

You've got my vote! I'm actually not too dissatisfied with XPath 1.0, it
meets my requirements, barring the absence of transitive closure..

Christian Nentwich

• References:
  • Recently published W3C Working Drafts
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
  • Re: Recently published W3C Working Drafts (long)
    • From: Paul T <pault12@p...>

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