RE: First working draft of XSL

Natural language is also more concise and easier to read than XML.
Fortunately for us, the spec - writers did not use that.

Be thankful!

Chetan

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Chetan Gadgil
Fujitsu Network Comm.
408-895-1633
chetan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, David Schach wrote:

> Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 10:51:59 -0700
> From: David Schach <davidsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To: "'xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: First working draft of XSL
> 
> The original XSL submission used XML for the patterns.  However, the new XSL
> pattern syntax is much more concise and easier to read than an XML based
> pattern syntax.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Mark_Overton@xxxxxxxxx [SMTP:Mark_Overton@xxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent:	Tuesday, August 18, 1998 10:30 AM
> > To:	xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject:	Re: First working draft of XSL
> > 
> > My first thought is this:
> > Why did they not use XML for the structure of the patterns, etc.
> > 
> > For example,
> > Here is a rule example from the new spec
> > <xsl:template match="book[excerpt]/author[attribute(degree)]">
> > ...
> > </xsl:template>
> > 
> > This could have been something like:
> > <xsl:template>
> >      <match>
> >           <element type="book">
> >                <element type="excerpt"/>
> >                <target type="author>
> >                     <attribute name="degree"/>
> >                </target>
> >           </type>
> >      </match>
> > <action>
> >   ...
> > </action>
> > </xsl:template>
> > 
> > This way the xsl processor could read the stylesheet without having to
> > parse all of this new syntax.  We have a great tool in XML for
> > representing
> > structured data so why did we have to come up with another?  Now, to read
> > an XSL stylesheet I need to parse all of these new delimiters and more
> > ('/'
> > | '//' | '(' | ')' | '|' | '[' | ']' | ',' | '=' | '.' | '..' | '*' | '{'
> > |
> > '(' |, etc.......).  All of the built in functionality of my XML parser is
> > of no use.  What a shame.
> > 
> > -Mark Overton
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list