[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

New/old pattern syntax, why can't we have both ?

Subject: New/old pattern syntax, why can't we have both ?
From: "Pasqualino \"Titto\" Assini" <assini@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:23:48 +0200
old pattern
There has already been a lot of criticism regarding the new "compact"
XSL syntax for pattern matching.

The main, and correct, argument being that as it doesn't conform to XML
syntax.

Personally I find the new syntax pleasing and much nicer to read and
write that the old one but I also need to work on the patterns as if
they were written in "real" XML. 

I think that the solution is very simple. 

The new syntax should be seen as a shorthand for the full, verbose, XML
form. 

It would be the parser responsibility to translate the compact form into
the normalised, "canonical" fully-XML form so that the application
programmer can be oblivious of this syntax details.

This is nothing new, RDF, for example has defined a compact and full
format for its descriptions with a clear mapping between the two forms. 

I know that supporting two syntaxes would make parser writing slightly
more complex but, as parsers gets written just once and then used
billions of times, this is not really an issue.

So my proposal would be: 
- define a canonical XML form for pattern matching
- define a one-to-one mapping between the canonical form and the compact
form
- require any conforming XML/XSL parser to return the canonical form.

-- 
Pasqualino "Titto" Assini  ---  assini@xxxxxxxx  
Kamus Internet Consulting  ---  http://www.kamus.it/


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


Current Thread

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.