RE: alternating tags in a list?

	I agree that the issue is the choice to eschew arithmetic, boolean
and character expressions in the pattern matching syntax. I have hoped that
this will be corrected by the larger Query Language process.
	The development of SQL should be taken as a lesson to all language
designers (what it does right and wrong). Chris Date has pointed out that at
the beginning of SQL's life, it was felt that the language should not
attempt to be a complete language, rather SQL would need to be embedded in
other languages. This is now seen as a mistake. Commercial implementations
add the constructs that the language is missing in incompatible ways. In
particular, Date, in his excellent Foundation for Object/Relational
Databases, p. 169, points to Jon Bentley's classic "Little Languages" paper
(available in More Programming Pearls).
	The implication for XSL from this, IMHO, is that the pattern match
syntax should contain the basic arithmetic, boolean and string operators and
constant representations.
Cheers,
David vun Kannon

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx [SMTP:Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent:	Tuesday, December 15, 1998 8:40 AM
> To:	xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:	Re: alternating tags in a list?
> 
> This isn't a declaritive model issue.
> 
> You can declare it any which way you think is a good way. The current XSL
> language spec doesn't have this facility, but that by no means says that
> it
> can't. All you are trying to declare in the alternate tag issue is if
> (row.index() % 2 == 1), the can be structure to fit with the present
> pattern matching syntax any way the W3C see fit....::shrug::...
> <xsl:template match="index(this)$mod$2=1">... if we favour the built in
> methods with evaluations approach, otherwise pick some characters off your
> keyboard to express this.
> 
> Cheers
>      Guy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 12/16/98 01:57:49 AM
> 
> To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
> Subject:  Re: alternating tags in a list?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul Prescod wrote
> >As James Clark has pointed out on several occasions, if you want to turn
> >every other row in a table blue, this is *trivial* in DOM code.
> How do you know that you want to turn every other row blue?
> ie: who writes the DOM code and where is it executed?
> Isn't this just shifting a responsibility around, but admitting that the
> declarative model can't supply this by itself?
> How do I tell a browser that every 2nd line should be blue?
> I'd prefer to see the declarative language capable of defining this kind
> of
> event.
> Andy Dent BSc MACS AACM, Software Designer, A.D. Software, Western
> Australia
> OOFILE - Database, Reports, Graphs, GUI for c++ on Mac, Unix & Windows
> PP2MFC - PowerPlant->MFC portability
> http://www.highway1.com.au/adsoftware/crossplatform.html
> In SF for Macworld Jan 1st-9th 1999, at the AppMaker stand in DevDepot
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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