[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: how much complexity is unavoidable?

• To: "'K. Ari Krupnikov'" <ari@c...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: how much complexity is unavoidable?
• From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 16:28:20 -0000
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <f0fvg2v9m4f.fsf@p...>
• Reply-to: <michael.h.kay@n...>

> Here's an observation:
> 
>   [kari@pc-kari kari]$ du -sh $XSLT_SOURCES
>   9.3M    xalan-j_2_4_0/src/org/apache
>   2.8M    saxon6_5_2/source/com/icl/saxon
>   1.6M    xt-20020426a-src/src/com/jclark
> 
> There are two issues with this that I could immediately think 
> of: (1)XT is incomplete, missing some minor feature which 
> Xalan is reported to support. (2)Xalan includes xsltc, an 
> XSLT-to-Java-bytecode compiler; OTOH, both XT and Saxon 
> include their own parsers, whereas Xalan relies on Xerces 
> (not included in the estimate).

Size and complexity are different things.

But I think you will find that on a single-person project (like Saxon or
xt) there is constant adaptation of existing classes to make them more
powerful and reusable, and to eliminate duplication, whereas on a
multi-person project (like Xalan) there is a tendency to try to
implement your part of the system without changing other people's parts,
even if this leads to duplication.

The biggest reason for the discrepancy is probably that the Xalan
package actually contains two completely separate XSLT processors,
Xalan-J and XSLTC.

One reason that the Saxon source is twice the size of xt is that half
the lines are comments; James Clark is notoriously averse to commenting
his code.

Michael Kay

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: how much complexity is unavoidable?
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)

• References:
  • how much complexity is unavoidable?
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)

• Prev by Date: Re: XML / HTML Transport size
• Next by Date: RE: XML and XSLT help needed
• Previous by thread: how much complexity is unavoidable?
• Next by thread: Re: how much complexity is unavoidable?
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread