RE: XSLT 2 backwards compatibility (wsd: Normalize / S

(replying to Wendell's msg as Andrew's reply didn't seem to have got here)

>1.  xslt that runs on the client needs to be portable, because there is
>no control over the client environment - however, its likely to be IE
>with msxml until the others catch up.  Msxml doesn't support xslt 2.0,
>and Ive heard there's no plans to support it, so the backwards
>compatibility issues wont apply here.


A lot of people are using xslt in mozilla derived browsers as well.
Hopefully more rather than less browsers will support xslt in future.
There are issues as to whether any current implementation is going to
follow saxon into xslt2-land but if saxon is the only implementation,
ever, then portability issues are somewhat of a non issue:-)

>2.  xslt that runs on the server / within an app doesn't need to be
>portable, as there is control over the target environment.
You've never switched from a static apache config based on saxon to a
dynamic cocoon one based on xalan (for example?) Or IIS or ...
You have control but no need to make it hard on yourself or hard to
share code with others in similar positions on different platforms.



>3.  If your xslt is freely distributed, and the processor it runs on is
>freely distributed, wheres the problem!  Its all free, and it runs 10x
>as fast :)
No you don't want to didtribute the processor. Code on this list,
docbook xsl, tei-xsl dimitre's fxsl library etc etc need to be able to
run in an unknown environment determined by the end user, not an
environment that can be packaged and distributed with the code.
If I am converting 1000 page docbook book to HTML I really don't care if
it takes 10 milliseconds or 10 minutes (I'll leave it going while I have
a cup of coffee anyway) but I don't want to have to install exactly the
same xslt engine on the same platform that Norm happened to have used
when he wrote thestylesheet. and then have to install a different
processor if the next day I decide to use tei and Sebastian's opus.

David

-- 
http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk/matthew

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