[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XSLT Functions in XSLT (Was: Re: XSLT 1.1 comments
Steve Muench wrote: > > > Some of the issues to think about on "Extension Functions in XSLT"... > > Some folks see this as sugar syntax for an <xsl:call-template>. > <snip!> > > This would mean that a function implemented in XSLT could > only return the same kind of thing that a template can > instantiate, that is, a result-tree-fragment. > Atomic types can be converted from RTF strings using the appropriate function. And in XSLT 1.1 RTF can be implictly converted to node-sets. This makes even a syntax-sugar spec really rather useful. > Others see the potential to be more powerful, allowing > the extension function returned in XSLT to return any > kind of supported XPath expression of any type in > the XSLT datamodel (XPath + ResultTreeFrag + External Object). > This is the approach that <saxon:function> and it's > <saxon:return> allow. > > Allowing XSLT-implemented functions to be more powerful > than templates in this way, makes some folks think that > it is a move in the direction of making XSLT more into > a programming language, when there are already lots of > good general programming languages available. These are > the folks that are fans of user-written extensions, letting > XSLT be good for what it's good for, and letting > external programming languages fill in when XSLT needs > a helping hand to accomplish a task that's easier to > do in a programming language. > But XSLT is also good at providing cross-platform portability - indeed one of it's strengths is that it is more portable than *any* language. This is something that the XSLT community are, I suspect from feedback in this list, very keen on. Take my case. We (http://www.ie.com) do e-commerce retail finance systems. Some of our systems can involve a multitude of backend trading partners, with no common server platform or language. That's why we use XML for our transactions. That's why when I was initially asked about developing a Perl module that would act as a partner-side API to our transactions, I recommended XML + XML Schema + SOAP instead. So I don't want language or platform dependencies in XML, in SOAP, in XML Schema (which is used by SOAP), in XPath (which is used by XML Schema) *or* in XSLT. For me, and I suspect for many on xsl-list, what XSLT does is provide *platform-independent* XML processing. The more it does that - and I'd accept that non-URL connectivity is outside that scope - the more I like it. Introducing gratuitous platform dependency - as in forcing users to write extension functions in platform specific languages - seems to me to lose focus from the purpose and benefit of XML and its associated standards. > These are some of the issues that the XSL WG is working on > tackling for XSLT 2.0. > On current proposals, putting this in for XSLT 2.0 will be like putting Humpty Dumpty together again. Francis. XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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