xsl output and d-o-e (was: How to deal with special ch

Someone wrote about disable-output-escaping:

> Yes, but that's non-portable
This is a myth, and also not the real problem. Every contemporary
processor i've seen and capable of serializing the output honors
this attribute (within the rules set by the spec).

The real problem is, that the output might not be serialized but
further processed directly from an in-memory representation like
a DOM tree. Any output control is obviously lost, as that's not part
of the APIs we currently have. From what i've heard, programmers
using MSXML client-side already fall into this trap often enough.

Interestingly, the spec does not explicitely ban the processor from
applying d-o-e on text nodes before they leave the control of the
processor, serialized or not. IMHO, this is a point where a clearer
distinction between the transformation and the subsequent handing
over to further processing like a serialization would be an advantage.
In fact, i think the serialization stage should be taken out of the
XSLT standard and get a life of its own, like XPath.

> and rarely required.
This is true.

Suggestion: Program the listbot so that if a mail from a first time
poster contains d-o-e, it gets an auto-reply with a pointer to the
FAQ. It's probably also useful to require XSLT processors to ask
the XSLT programmer for sufficient credentials if they attempt to
use d-o-e. ;-)

Regards
J.Pietschmann

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