Re: Stylesheet portability (Long) (Was: XSLT 1.1 comme

Joshua Allen wrote:
> 
> David Marston Wrote:
> 
> >Francis Norton made a remark about a lint-like utility for stylesheets
> >that has inspired some discussion. I think anything that passed cleanly
> >would be unrealistically constrained. To summarize, stylesheet portability
> 
> >up-to-date (but still conforms to the original XSLT 1.0)? What if
> >vendor A insists that the spec is perfectly clear in some area where
> >vendor B says there's a gray area? I think that a portable stylesheet
> 
> Right, this is a difficulty with a lint tool, but also why
> I always insist people should test on multiple processors.
> When people test their style sheets on multiple processors,
> they end up posting here, and then all the vendors talk about
> their assumptions, and things get better. 

Agreed - and I think that a lint transform would be a good way of
crystalising the xslt community's understanding and expectations of
portability.

> Also, as Java showed us, even if
> people are not convinced that code they write will port
> flawlessly, they want to feel that their *skills* can be applied
> on multiple platforms if necessary.  So each time they test
> XSLT on multiple processors and it works, there is a nice dose
> of validation that "I could ditch this job and get another job
> on any platform if I wanted." :-)  There are other benefits,
> too..

Cynical maybe, true certainly :)
 
> 
> 
> Anyway, you make a good point that a totally comprehensive
> XStyLinT(TM) would be very tedious.  One that caught the major
> pitfalls ought to be fairly easy, though, but for me
> it's just as easy to test..

I like the idea of a lint program that would be flexible enough to issue
informative warnings on gray areas (roman numerals?!) - in  fact I have
a feeling that the schematron would be perfect for this
(http://www.ascc.net/xml/resource/schematron/schematron.html) - it's a
similar task to validating whether XHTML conforms to WAI accessibility
guidelines
(http://www.ascc.net/xml/resource/schematron/WAI-example.html)

Francis.

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