Re: Future XSLT expansion.

| > But the 'node-sets'  they are returning ( and RTFs also ) 
| > are vendor specific.
| 
| No. If it returns something of type node-set then it is (or should be)
| usable by any xslt function expecting a node-set expression.

You're both a correct here. The spec allows for functions that
return the built-in types in the xpath data model,
but doesn't say anything about language bindings, so a question
a Java developer might ask is:

  "What should my Java extension function return to return an
   XPath node-set to my stylesheet?"

The answer turns out to be:

     XT: com.jclark.xsl.om.NodeIterator
  Saxon: com.icl.saxon.expr.NodeSetValue
  Xalan: org.w3c.dom.NodeList
 OraXSL: oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLNodeList
   etc.

The spec doesn't get into the Java language bindings.

| There is currently no standard API for producing (or using) node-set
| expressions from within an extension function, but there is no standard
| API for producing extensions at all, so this seems to be a lack of
| standard API for extensions rather than a problem with XSLT itself.

This fact is not going unnoticed by the XSL Working Group. :-)
 
_________________________________________________________
Steve Muench, Consulting Product Manager & XML Evangelist
Business Components for Java Development Team

Oracle Rep to the W3C XSL Working Group



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