Re: Building a nodeset by recursion

Kay Michael wrote:
> 
> >  You can't (unfortunately:-) use a result tree fragment as a source tree
> > for a run with apply-templates, or deconstruct the list in any way.
> 
> Indeed this is the problem. The key operation in XSL, of applying templates,
> does not exhibit "closure", in that its output cannot be used as the input
> to further operations. This makes it analogous to early database
> manipulation languages before SQL was invented...
> 
I understand the design goal of making XSLT easy to implement, but I am
beginning to wonder whether having a successful, almost-full-strength
XML transformation language may not have the effect of crowding out
development of a full-strength XML transformation language. If someone
proposes a genuinely general purpose transformation language, won't the
general reaction be "we've already implemented support for XSLT which
does most of what we want, let's just live with its limitations"?

However as I know practically nothing about implementing languages I
have no idea how reasonable or unreasonable this request would be.

Francis.
-- 
Francis Norton.

Air Rage - a "flight *and* fight" reaction?


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