Re: Is there a reason for not using XSLT 2.0 as a defa

Wow!  I had a totally different understanding that was obviously based
on some bad information.  Either that or I simply misunderstood the
particular source that expanded upon why XSLT 2.0 was a dead issue at
MS until such time as the draft became final.  I'm guessing the latter
as I know the source in which passed this info on to me to be
completely trustworthy and reliable so I simply must have
misinterpreted the comments to mean one thing when they meant
something completely different.

I will see if I can gain some clarification comments and post them if
this is something that would be considered kosher from the source in
which they are obtained.

Thanks for the expanded understanding Dr. Kay!

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 09:57:13 -0000, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > In fact one of the primary reasons Microsoft has held back from
> > providing direct support for the XSLT 2.0 spec is based on the last
> > second 'split' of the 1.0 spec into the XSL (FO) and XSLT
> > specifications causing an incompatible processor to be propogated and
> > a support nightmare to be invoked.
> 
> Just to add to DC's reply.
> 
> It's a mistake to imagine that Microsoft's WD-xsl processor was a faithful
> and accurate implementation of a draft W3C specification. The WD-xsl
> language actually bears no more relationship to the Dec 1998 draft of the
> language than it does to the final Dec 1999 spec. This is partly because the
> Dec 1998 draft is peppered with descriptions of open issues: anyone
> implementing it had to make their own decisions on how to resolve these.
> It's quite clear to anyone reading that draft that it was in a very
> unfinished state. Many features of WD-xsl bear no resemblence to anything in
> any W3C draft: you can search in vain for operators such as $and$ or for the
> functions that access the context stack. These features were added by
> Microsoft because the W3C draft was incomplete.
> 
> To suggest that W3C had a complete specification, that Microsoft implemented
> it in good faith, and that W3C then changed it at the last minute, is
> therefore a complete distortion. I don't know what motivated Microsoft to
> ship product at the time they did, but it was obvious to any observer at the
> time that they were basing their product very loosely on a specification
> that was incomplete and still changing. It was evident to me as an outsider,
> and would have been even more evident to someone with access to the WG
> minutes, which I have since seen. The WG was making radical changes at every
> single meeting, often without a written proposal on the table, and Microsoft
> were members so they would have known that.
> 
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
> 
> 


-- 
<M:D/>

:: M. David Peterson ::
XML & XML Transformations, C#, .NET, and Functional Languages Specialist