RE: XSLT 1.1 comments

Time to throw a bit of grease on the fire. 

Alexey Gokhberg wrote:

> Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> >
> > > introducing the need for language bindings only reduces general
> > > interoperability while giving a small boost to
> > > interoperability between small axes of implementations.
> > >
> 
> Michael Kay wrote:
> > 
> > I don't understand. How can defining a Java language binding which
> > implementors are at liberty to implement or not, reduce 
> interoperability
> > when compared with allowing each implementor to invent a 
> different Java
> > language binding, which is the current situation at XSLT 1.0?
>

If I want to assert that my XSLT processor is 100% XSLT 1.1 compliant then
anyone who uses my processor should be confindent that it will correctly
transform XML using any XSLT 1.1 compliant document. Now it just so happens
that I wrote my processor in fortran. Either I am not going to be able to
claim to be compliant OR I am going to have to spend thousands of hours
mapping java to fortran. 

Now, if there is no xsl:script tag, then I don't have to worry about making
those mappings because they are not part of the XSL namespace. This way, ALL
XSLT 1.1 transforms will work (I'll make sure that other namespaces fallback
gracefully). The fact of the matter is, NOT defining a language mapping is
more interoperable than having one. 

Not everyone needs to or even want to implement JAVA... Just ask Microsoft.
In fact, other language bindings might be more useful than JAVA. 

Now if having a common language mapping is so utterly important, then move
it into another namespace (XSL-Scripting). 

> I agree with Uche.

So do I

> By the way, the liberty to implement or not to implement Java language
> binding exists only in theory. The COST of implementing Java 
> binding is
> very much different for XSLT implementors which use Java, and for XSLT
> implementors using different languages.

Perhaps, instead of defining everything in terms of JAVA or C++, perhaps its
time to take a left turn and look at Microsoft's CLI which would allow one
to write in any language (assuming a proper complier existed) and run on any
platform. I have no idea how it would work but I'm sure someone does. In
fact, using CLI is perhaps better than JAVA, if for no other reason than
interoperablity. Microsoft has submitted C# and the CLI
(http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/memento/tc39.htm) to ECMA for standardization
where JAVA is apparently still proprietary to SUN. 

Adam

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