[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: XSLT 1.1 comments

Subject: Re: XSLT 1.1 comments
From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 08:06:37 -0700
regexp match xsl
> Clark C. Evans wrote:
> > Many people want scripts beacuse the "modulization" abilities
> > of XSLT leave alot to be desired, i.e., making a template and
> > calling a template are just too verbose.
> 
> That's not the primary reason I could imagine wanting user-defined
> functions. I can imagine two situations that this would not help:
> 
> 1. for getting information about the system in ways impossible in
> XSLT, like getting the current date, testing whether a file or
> directory exists, or pulling information out of a database from within
> a stylesheet

This is prime territory for separately standardized extensions, say using 
POSIX.

> 2. for accessing templates within XPath predicates - for example if I
> write a funky regexp match template then I'd like to be able to use it
> to select all nodes whose value matches a particular regexp

Prime territory for improving run-time dynamicism within XSLT itself.  I think 
introspection has proven itself as a powerful means of improving programmer 
expressivity, and better introspective and dynamic programming support in XSLT 
would eliminate, IMO, most of the need for extensions beyond standard 
libraries.

> There are ways around both these current limitations - you can pass
> the current date and so on in as a parameter, and you can (in XSLT
> 1.1) construct an RTF holding copies of or references to the relevant
> nodes to get the second functionality - but they're very unweildy.

I agree that they are currently unweildy, but I think that this will be 
minimized by standardization layered on top of XSLT 1.0.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python



 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


Current Thread

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.