Re: XSLT 1.1 comments -Examples please

> 1. A usage illustrating portability. Say get and re-format the date
>    in ecmascript, which could also use a java extension, as per DC comment.
>   - Regularly asked for? Reasonably 'safe'.


I just posted this off list to someone, may as well repost here (the
actual method and class names  don't work, but the basic
principle I hope is clear)


David




If you have a web form on which you get a date in the local language
settings and want to know if it is within a month of today, are you
really going to write a recursive xslt extension function to do that
or use a couple of lines to an extension language with built in locale
aware date handling? More than anyone I've argued for the benefits of
the functional approach, but I know which I would do. (Until XSLT n+1
when the feature gets added to XSLT)


Using xsl:script you can implement a date:number-of-days-between(a,b)
function that works for any XSLT 1.1 implementation that supports
javascript or vbscript or java. I don't think you can do that
in xslt 1.0 in any reasonable way.

in xslt 1.1 you make date: point of at any unique URI and then give 
multiple xsl:script to bind that URI to date related methods in whatever
target languages you are using.

in XSLT 1.0 you have to make date: point to a URI that is an xsl engine
specific prefix followed by a URI using the java class name, so it only
works on one engine, not even all the java ones.

xmlns:date="http://www.oracle.com.XSL/Transform/java/java.util.Date
(if java.util.date had a method of that name, which it probably doesn't) 

This is what xsl:script is trying to avoid.

It means I can use

<xsl:value-of select="date:number-of-days-between($a,$b)"/>

rather than the XSL 1.0 equivalent

<xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="function-exists('xt:number-of-days-between')">
    <xsl:value-of select="xt:number-of-days-between($a,$b)"/>
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:when test="function-exists('saxon:number-of-days-between')">
    <xsl:value-of select="saxon:number-of-days-between($a,$b)"/>
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:when test="function-exists('xalan:number-of-days-between')">
    <xsl:value-of select="xalan:number-of-days-between($a,$b)"/>
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:when test="function-exists('msxsl:number-of-days-between')">
    <xsl:value-of select="msxsl:number-of-days-between($a,$b)"/>
  </xsl:when>

which is crazy, especialy given that the first three areeven using the
same class, thus the same code, just specified differently.



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