Re: Venting

>To me, this is an argument for keeping the specs together.  I don't
>want a browser that doesn't implement FOs to be able to claim XSL
>compliance.  (Given various browsers' track records, that probably
>won't stop them.  Does anyone remember "HTML 3.0 compatible!"?)


I don't think we have any conflict.  All we need is to isolate the
transformation portion of the current XSL and name it XTL.  XSL then becomes
XTL + FO.  If Microsoft claims XSL compliance then they will have to
implement both XTL and FO.

Meanwhile, those of us who find XTL useful can build products that
implements or uses XTL.  We can then say that our products implement XTL or
uses XTL rather than saying something fishy like 'our product implements or
uses the transformation half of XSL'.

It is possible that we can just start using the word XTL as the alias for
'the first half of the XSL spec'.  It is also possible that we can create a
new XML transformation language from scratch but I don't think that is very
constructive.

It is my belief that the real value of the DOM API is that it allows other
technology sectors to draw from the growing pool of DHTML programmers.
Having XTL as the standard on which XSL builds on allows communities
depending on other XTL-based technologies to draw from the XSL community and
vice versa.  I find this to be a worthy goal to pursue.

Best,

Don Park
Docuverse



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