Re: run-time errors in XSLT

Evan Lenz analyzed many of the discretionary provisions of
the XSLT spec and then concluded:
>I want to see an annotated XSLT spec!! I want to know what
>James, et al. were thinking.

My take is different: I want these Working Groups (WGs) to ensure
that "what they were thinking" is embodied in the spec. It may
be necessary for the W3C to give more guidance to the WGs about
what the words must say explicitly.

I've been trying to separate the explicit and testable content
from the vague or incomplete in XSLT and XPath for two years
now. Working on the OASIS XSLT/XPath Conformance Committee, I
often have to reject "what they were thinking" as a basis for
a conformance test. On the other hand, it would be interesting
(but probably not normative) to know why each discretionary
provision ("may signal the error or ignore" stuff) was put in
there.
.................David Marston


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