Re: Accessing a node name from within <xsl:attribute>

Joshua Allen wrote:

> The first thing to establish, though, is that Mike Kay
> is definitely not the person to ask XSL questions regarding
> Microsoft.

He is also not the person to resolve issues of Xalan-C compilation under VAX VMS
(althogh it is a question pertinent to XSL). Michael is known to know everything
about XSLT, but not about every platform-specific quirk of every product. Ergo,
Microsoft should alleviate his pains by intervening promptly, as soon as a (yet
another) newbie question is asked about MSXML 2.0 in
ASP/OLE/COM/MFC/ATL/whatever other proprietary MS stuff.

> I think he has a filter set up that detects
> keywords like "IE5" or "Microsoft" and automatically
> spits out some form of "Microsoft [expletive deleted]" without regard
> to the actual question asked.

I think Microsoft-specific questions are better answered by Microsoft people. As
for the criticism in the list every time an IE5-related message arrives, you
know its cause perfectly well. We are going to celebrate the first anniversary
of XSLT/XPath Rec, and there is still no sign of whether it goes to replace
MS-XSL in IE. In a meantime, MSXML 2.0 usage proliferates, generating confusion;
and Microsoft does not seem to care about it. I don't think this can be
explained by technical time required to write code/docs: Michael Kay alone built
a 100% compliant implementation and wrote an excellent book (that includes a
detailed documentation of MSXML ;-)). I wonder if MS developers aren't motivated
enough to work as hard as Michael?

> He was perfectly capable of answering your question, and
> would have answered it had you pretended to be using Saxon.

Yes, because in the latter case he would have had a master knowledge of the
internals. Your irritation is completely unjustified.

> He is also perfectly aware that IE5 shipped before the
> XSLT spec was finished and thus implements an older version
> of the spec.  He is also aware that there have been many
> updates to XSLT support for IE5 available free for download
> at http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml.  With the updated parser
> you can also download the newer SDK, which includes online
> references for XSLT/XPath and code samples.

The enlightened Saxon/XT/Xalan users know it, though hardly need it. But newbies
that ask a question about MSXML aren't aware of it! IMVHO, instead of a cryptic
"preview release", Microsoft should upgrade the version of IE5 it ships (making
it e.g. IE5.1) or at least include it into a service pack, so that the
difference between MSXSL'98 and XSLT become palpable as a difference between
browser versions. In its current shape, it looks like people are discouraged
from using MSXML3: "it's preview, unstable, poorly documented - it's for techie
geeks only".

I know you have your own release schedules that you can neither anticipate nor
disclose; but you surely understand this situation cannot generate but
frustration.

Best Regards,

Nikolai Grigoriev
RenderX





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