On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
> Your text is so exhaustive that it's difficult to agree with 
> all the bullet points ;=) 

Thank you Eric.  I think the same comment holds within 
the group of primary petitioners.  Not everyone agrees
with every point made.  It is the 'sum of the points
which is important.

> > 1. The XSLT specification clearly states XSLT is not
> > intended as a completely general-purpose XML transformation
> > language.  XSLT is a special purpose language and should be
> > maintained as such.  Much like structured query language, we
> > think the general purpose languages should embed XSLT, not
> > the other way round.
> 
> "Embed" reminds me of embedded SQL C, a widely used and, IMO, very
> broken combination with many limitations that made it almost impossible
> to write object oriented or even structured code and I hope we will
> never see embedded XSLT in this way...

In '93 I had to personally maintain thousands of lines of 
SQL Embedded In C.  It was a far better solution than
most at the time, and this served as a stepping stone for
"real" report-writers, etc.  Which, as far as my thinking
goes, do infact embeed SQL and have not impeeded the the 
portability of SQL.  While, I feel report specific constructs
within SQL would have seriously hindered SQL portability.

> And in both cases, the combination "code+xslt" is language 
> dependent making it rather weird to say that one would be 
> portable when the other is not.  

IMHO, We were only talking about keeping the XSLT portable... ;)

Clark








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