Microsoft extensions to XSL (was RE: how to call Javascript

Paul, I agree with your concerns, but one of your shots missed. See the DOM
spec's description of the Node class; there's a table which shows what
nodeName and nodeValue are mapped to for each of the subclasses of Node.

The DOM's nodeName attribute (please note: that's "IDL attribute", or
"property", not XML Attribute!) will equal the tagname when you're working
with Element nodes, the attribute name when it's an Attr node, the entity
name when it's an Entity or EntityReference node, and so on. The "unnamed"
nodes (Text, CDATASection, Comment, Document, and DocumentType) return a
recognizable constant string as their nodeName.

An Element node's name is _also_ available via Element.tagName, as a
"convenience feature".

So Microsoft's proposed xsl:node-name actually does make sense as a more
general alternative to tagName, though we can argue about whether they've
chosen the best way to express and manipulate it in the XSL.


(I'm involved in the DOM Interest Group, and I've spent many hours this
year pounding on an implementation of the DOM. I've got half the spec
swapped into wetware at this point!)
______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research
Unless stated otherwise, all opinions are solely those of the author.



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