Re: Which engine? (RE: JavaScript and XSL)

From: Mike Brown <mike@xxxxxxxx>

> > After I realized that SAXON ( which is very good 
> > engine) makes hidden RTF->node-set typecast 
> > ( the thing MS were blamed for ),  I feel not 
> > comfortable when somebody says 
> > 'conformant XSLT engine'  in public place.
> 
> SAXON only started doing this with version 5.5, which is only a few weeks
> old. If you read the release notes you would see the reasoning behind it.
> It is 'anticipatory conformance' (anticipating XSLT 1.1) whereas when
> MSXML did it, it was 'irresponsible disregard for the recommended
> extension function interfaces' because at that time there was no hint that
> it would ever be accepted practice.

Great! This means this is not a bug in SAXON , but SAXON does
this on purpose! I'm very glad.
 
> My opinion is that if I write a stylesheet with version="1.0" then it is
> my job as a document author to not attempt to do anything that isn't
> allowed by XSLT 1.0. If I want to do a result tree fragment to node-set
> conversion, I need to use an extension function. If an XSLT processor
> wants to give me the option of not using an extension function on a "1.0"  
> document, then the processor may not be 1.0 conformant, as 1.0 stands
> today. If XSLT 1.1 comes tomorrow and updates XSLT 1.0 the way HTTP/1.1
> did to HTTP/1.0, then there is no problem. Until then, I have not written
> a truly 1.0 conformant stylesheet, and I have no right to complain about
> conformance of any XSLT processor. :)

<xsl:stylesheet  
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
    xmlns:xt="http://www.jclark.com/xt"
 version="1.0">

This was the header of my stylesheet. It says version="1.0".

This means SAXON already allows me to write XSLT 1.1
using version="1.0". Right? 

This means stylesheets I write in SAXON are not portable.
( in the universe of version="1.0" )

To understand how this fits into entire picture of 'conformance' 
and 'standards' is not for children like me. 

I give up.

Rgds.Paul.




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