On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 00:47 +0400, Oleg A. Paraschenko wrote:
>   Hi Uche,
> 
> On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 09:41:26 -0600
> Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@f...> wrote:
> 
> > ...
> > > * It's possible to say "apply-templates" in Scheme code.
> > 
> > It's certainly possible to say that in Python code (and I'd be surprised
> > if it wasn't, with some work, in most other languages as well).
> 
>   I can't say for every XSLT library and extension API, but the task is
> hard in libxslt. Or maybe I just overlooked the right way.
> 
>   You say it's possible in Python code. What is the domain of the code? Is
> it an extension for 4XSLT, or for libxslt, or for some other library?

You're right: I should have been more clear.  I'm talking about 4XSLT
extensions here.  I don't know the libxslt extensions system all that
well.


> > > * Controversal: XSieve supports entities in output.
> > 
> > Why is that controversial?  If the entities are created by extension
> > elements, it should be perfectly legitimate.
> 
>   Yes, it's legitimate, but entities are foreign to XSLT, and creating
> entities is something of the same style as disable-output-escaping.

Hmm.  I'm not sure I see why.  Does specifying CDATA section elements in
output fall under this umbrella as well?  I don't think anyone says it's
bad to ever use disable-output-escaping.  I think it's more that people
know that using it is *almost always* a result of the user's not quite
knowing what they are doing.  If someone knows what they're doing, I
don't see a problem in specifying entities for output.


>   By the way, I found practical problems with generating entities. They
> might become input data through use of xsl:variable or xsl:with-param.
> As result, functions like xsl:value-of and exsl:node-set might be
> confused.

Well, sure, no one isn't saying it wouldn't be a matter of careful
design in the implementation.  If generating entities in output is
important to you (it is not important at all to me, BTW), then you deal
with such practical problems.

We have a lot of things in the 4XSLT extension library (which is pretty
big, even after subtracting the EXSLT extensions), that required such
careful design.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net                    http://fourthought.com
http://copia.ogbuji.net                   http://4Suite.org
Use CSS to display XML, part 2 - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss2-i.html
XML Output with 4Suite & Amara - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/20/py-xml.html
Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-oocalc/
Schema standardization for top-down semantic transparency - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think31.html