Well, this proposal at least has some usefulness. I am somewhat wary
of the MatTS approach because, IIRC, the XML spec says that verbosity
is not a thing.

So why is Michael's suggestion so useful? because it hits at the very
center of what makes XML itself so useful of course. The semantic
richness implied by being able to mix languages in markup means that
one will have access to the whole panopolyp of human imaginarium.
As shown by Thomas Von Shrinavan's seminal polylinguistic analysis
"Eh? Meaning on multiple axii of interpretation" any language will
have, for every thousand words, a composite concept inexpressible in
any other language without use of an obscenity, and for every ten
thousand words a concept that is simply inexpressible in any language
whatsoever. This fine codswallop of the soul is food for what ails
modern markup as she is practiced, and I hope to see some more
forthwit.

Cheerios,
Bryan Rasmussen


On 4/1/06, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I find it mildly disappointing that you are still using long-winded names
> like "trackNbr" in your XML source documents, and that XPath function names
> still have long-winded names like, well, "name". Surely it's time we
> established a convention that all elements in user documents should be
> denoted by a single Kanji, and that function names should be written in
> Hebrew?
>
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sean M. Burke [mailto:sburke@xxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: 01 April 2006 13:26
> > To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: [xsl] MatTS, an alternate syntax for XSLT
> >
> > [NB: at http://use.perl.org/~TorgoX/journal/29175 I have
> > pasted a copy
> > of this message, in case the Unicode characters don't show up
> > right in
> > your email client.]
> >
> > For some time now, the syntax of XSLT has bothered me -- its
> > verbosity,
> > that gushing typographic clutter, clearly encumbers best-practices
> > programming.
> >
> > XLove [http://www.cs.rit.edu/~dpl1926/] suggests an alternate syntax
> > that emphasizes the functional nature of XSLT; and SXML
> > [http://okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/SXML.scm] posits a representation of
> > general XML data as Lisp forms. But both of these, aside from
> > reducing
> > close-tags to a single character, do very little to solve
> > XSLT's clutter
> > problem.
> >
> > I think it's time for a better alternate syntax for viewing
> > and writing
> > XSLT. In this document I will propose such a system, which I
> > call MatTS
> > (Matryoshka Transformation Syntax).
> >
> > XLove and SXML start out with an implementation of alternate
> > syntax as
> > an input which becomes conventional XSLT.  But so as to
> > better tune the
> > alternate syntax as a visual artifact, I instead choose to
> > implement the
> > alternate syntax as a view of XSLT, which XSLT becomes.  (As such, I
> > have left the development of an editing environment as a mere
> > implementational detail which I am sure the marketplace will
> > provide for
> > in due time, as it has done for UML, that other recent
> > breakthrough in
> > informatic display.)
> >
> > Most hierarchy-based notations display their structure with bits of
> > matching punctuation, whether parens, brackets, or braces.
> > However, I
> > view this as a holdover from the days of daisywheel printers
> > and other
> > forms of mere movable type. With our modern bitmap displays and LASER
> > printers, it is far easier and clearer to display structure
> > as series of
> > matryoshka-like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll] nested
> > shapes -- say, boxes.  Clearly, (foo ((bar) baz)) is inferior to the
> > clarity of this diagram:
> >
> >      +---------------+
> >      |foo +---------+|
> >      |    |+---+    ||
> >      |    ||bar|    ||
> >      |    |+---+    ||
> >      |    |baz      ||
> >      |    +---------+|
> >      +---------------+
> >
> > [presented as ASCII art for ease of transmission]
> >
> > This sort of matryoshka notation is the basis of my new
> > variant syntax
> > for XSLT, and it in fact gives the syntax its name. But in and of
> > itself, this notation would go no further than Xlt and SXML
> > at relieving
> > XSLT's clutter problem.  The greatest benefit of MatTS is in
> > providing a
> > terse syntax for all important XSLT constructs.  In the best
> > tradition
> > of modern higher mathematical notation and typography
> > [http://math.berkeley.edu/~ilya/papers/PL_Grassmannian/gel_dik
> > f.pdf], I
> > have chosen well-known Greek letters and various printers'
> > symbols for
> > the operators.
> >
> > The following table illustrates and specifies this formalism:
> >
> >      a apply-imports
> >      _ apply-templates
> >      t attribute
> >      ? attribute-set
> >      ? call-template
> >      ? choose
> >      ? comment
> >      5 copy
> >      ? copy-of
> >      ? decimal-format
> >      p element
> >      ? fallback
> >      ? for-each
> >      f if
> >      O import
> >      G include
> >      T key
> >      5 message
> >      ? namespace-alias
> >      ? number
> >      ? otherwise
> >      ? output
> >      ? param
> >      ? preserve-space
> >      e sort
> >      ? strip-space
> >      S stylesheet
> >      ? template
> >      ? text
> >      ? transform
> >      ? value-of
> >      d variable
> >      s when
> >      ? with-param
> >      ? processing-instruction
> >
> >      ?... test="..."
> >      v... name="..."
> >      ... match="..."
> >      '... select="..."
> >      +...; (general attribute value)
> >
> > The preceding explanation aside, the best way to appreciate
> > MatTS is by
> > simply trying it out -- MatTS as a visualization application
> > is itself
> > implemented in browser-accessible XSLT, and so can be used to
> > view other
> > XSLTs as well as itself:
> >   http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/xsl/matts_usage_example.xsl
> >   http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/xsl/matts.xsl
> > Compare with the clutter of those XSLs when viewed in
> > conventional XSLT
> > notation:
> >   http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/xsl/matts_usage_example.xsl.txt
> >   http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/xsl/matts.xsl.txt
> >
> >
> > --
> > Sean M. Burke   http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/