Re: XSLT vs Perl

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 08:41:15PM -0000, Michael Kay wrote:
> Yet we all know on this list that XSLT 1.0 has severe limitations. It's
> very hard to do grouping, it's hard to do string manipulation, it's hard
> to handle dates.
> 
> We've provided facilities in 2.0 that greatly ease these problems.

If XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 stopped there, it would have been marvelous.

But both of those specs integrate portions of XQuery and XML Schema
that are really over the top.  As it stands, XSLT 2.0 smells of second
system syndrome.  There are more freeping creatures in there than I can
count.  And understanding what all of those creatures do requires a 
huge investment in time, paper and effort.

By comparison, XSLT 1.0 required a good grasp of XPath 1.0 and a small
number of XSLT element behaviors.  Fewer interrelations, fewer
techniques to master, and easier to apply than what I remember from the
XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery 1.0/XML Schema 1.0/XML Schema Datatypes 1.0
stack.

> Therefore, if people preferred XSLT 1.0 over other languages when
> performing these tasks, despite its shortcomings, they will certainly
> prefer XSLT 2.0 over other languages.

Actually, the way XSLT 2.0 is going, I'd much prefer XSLT 1.1 or 1.5:
add the grouping and date handling, remove the nodeset/rtf distinction,
and fix a couple of other warts in XSLT 1.0.  *That* would be a killer
language.

The situations that demand input/output validation and XQuery
integration are totally separate domains.  That greatly complicates 
XSLT 2.0, and obscures the fact that part of XSLT 2.0 is 
XSLT 1.0 - warts + fixes.

Z.


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