Re: Re: Evaluating XPath expressions found in the sour

Good topic - keep it going!

Mark

> 
> From: "Michael Beddow" <mbnospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 2001/08/16 Thu AM 06:30:38 EDT
> To: "Jeni Tennison" <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re:  Evaluating XPath expressions found in the source document
> 
> On Thursday, August 16, 2001 10:56 AM
> Jeni Tennison wrote:
> 
> > No, it is an XPath expression, consisting of a single function call. I
> > think that the terminology confusion comes because XPath sounds as
> > though it's just about paths, but actually location paths are just one
> > type of expression (albeit the most common). Expressions cover
> > anything that you can put in the select attribute of xsl:value-of, so
> > include arithmetic and function calls.
> 
> Hi Jeni!
> 
> So it *was* ignorance, as I suspected. But now it's replaced by deep
> confusion and anxiety about the notion of a function that seems to exist
> divorced from any mechanism for  implementing it (talking "functions" in
> the loose computer language sense, not the mathematical one). I
> understand now that those functions are part of the XPath spec, not the
> XSLT spec, but surely they still have to be implemented by the XSLT
> processor, and I took the query to be about implementation, not
> specification.
> 
> I mean, the subset of XPath expressions I had mistakenly taken to be the
> entire set are simply abstract notations of how to identify a node from
> a known starting point. All they need in the real world is a possibility
> of there being a instance of a tree that fits them. But concat(), though
> it too is an abstraction, is one whose realisation requires a machine
> somewhere that knows how to do things to the data. And where is that
> machine, if not in the XSLT processor? But if that is in indeed where it
> is, how is format-number() different from concat() in terms of what can
> actually be done to what and where?
> 
> What struck me about the original query, as I (mis)understood it, was
> that it seemed to be aiming for a LISP-like interchangeability of
> programming instructions and data, which I didn't think XSLT was up to.
> 
> Sorry if my ramblings are off-topic. Perhaps they should be off-list,
> too. But maybe other people are as muddled about this as I obviously am
> and need the same sort of help.
> 
> Michael
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Beddow   http://www.mbeddow.net/
> XML and the Humanities page:  http://xml.lexilog.org.uk/
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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