the future of the XSLT syntax

[valued customer]

What do you think is the future of efforts to reduce the "verbosity"
of XSLT, ostensibly by people who have had years of experience working
with this technology?

(example site) http://www.zanthan.com/ajm/xsltxt/docs.html

It would be interesting to hear what people think about alternative
syntaxes for XSLT (less verbose), especially from those who have had
to maintain or
extend XSLT projects for 'non-traditional' uses, such as outputting
non-XML content.

Also what do people think about the so-called "Law of Symbolic
Leverage"?
(as it might relate to XSLT)

http://seven.typepad.com/your_inner_mouse/2004/05/the_law_of_symb.html

 

[Peter Flynn]

What do you think is the future of efforts to reduce the "verbosity"
of XSLT, ostensibly by people who have had years of experience working
with this technology?

(example site) http://www.zanthan.com/ajm/xsltxt/docs.html

Rather pointless. Who are these people who ostensibly "have had years of
experience working with this technology"?

The site you quote betrays two quite serious misunderstandings of the
nature of XSLT and why it is like it is. If you are unable to identify
them, I suggest you need to learn a little more about text and markup.

///Peter

 

[valued customer]

Rather pointless. Who are these people who ostensibly "have had years of

experience working with this technology"?

them, I suggest you need to learn a little more about text and markup.

Quite a curious response ... to admit unfamiliarity with a group of people,
and then to go on to suggest this unknown group needs to 'learn a little more.'

<paraphrase>
"I don't know anything about you ppl. You ppl need to learn."
</paraphrase>

.....HUH???

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% <paraphrase>
% "I don't know anything about you ppl. You ppl need to learn."
% </paraphrase>

% ....HUH???

Maybe a more accurate paraphrase would clear up your confusion

<paraphrase>
"I don't know anything about you ppl, but based on what you're suggesting,
you ppl need to learn."
</paraphrase>

 

[valued customer]

% ....HUH???

Maybe a more accurate paraphrase would clear up your confusion

<paraphrase>
"I don't know anything about you ppl, but based on what you're suggesting,
you ppl need to learn."
</paraphrase>

The expression "HUH" is not one of confusion, but one of observation
of non sequitir. The OP asked about *peoples opinions* of a noticeable
trend. The OP did not make any suggestion, and even if he had, it
is illogical to presume the level of knowledge or experience of the OP
based on a request for other people's opinions. This is especially true
when respondent admits knowing nothing about the background or experience
of the OP to begin with.

<analogy>
VIP: What are people's views on the recent efforts to
promote campaign finance reform?
PIP: Balderdash. Your question betrays nineteen fundamental
misunderstandings about the nature, validity, and
underlying socio-dynamics of campaign finance.
I don't know anything about you, but based on your suggestion,
you need to learn the basics.
VIP: Uhh ... oookay.
</analogy>

Interesting.

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% trend. The OP did not make any suggestion, and even if he had, it

I agree with this.

% based on a request for other people's opinions. This is especially true
% when respondent admits knowing nothing about the background or experience
% of the OP to begin with.

I do think the respondants comments were based on a perusal of the
proposal, which was basically pointless, and the question `who are
these supposed experts' (or whatever the precise wording was) was
meant to convey the notion that there is no expert who could have
come up with such a load of rubbish.

 

[Justin Kim]

<snip>

Personally I think it's quite useful to have an alternative syntax for
XSLT.

Before trash this idea as being 'completely off the mark', please
consider the following:

I think many people will agree that it is useful to have a open
text-formatting language that is defined in XML. (e.g., the likes of
XHTML or OOo wordprocessing formats) This does not mean the end-users
of such application need to see, or even know anything about, XML.
They will see what is described in XML through a 'frontend'.

What is being suggested is the equivalent for XSLT - XSLT, while being
a handy tool, suffers from a overly verbose syntax. If there were to
be a more programmer-friendly frontend over this, so it is easier to
understand, write and maintain, I think it will be a good thing.

Of course, there are a few things that needs to be ensured before this
becomes useful.
1. it should be an open standard.
2. it should maintain a strong 1 to 1 mapping with the original XSLT,
so this alternative syntax can be translated to and from the original
XSLT without any difficulty.

Any comments are of course welcome.

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% Personally I think it's quite useful to have an alternative syntax for
% XSLT.

This is debatable, but irrelevant to my remarks. I'd say that it's
quite useful to have alternative transformation languages which have
nothing to do with XSLT, but I'm not convinced that syntactic sugaring
would help much. Maybe if James Clark did it....

% Before trash this idea as being 'completely off the mark', please
% consider the following:

I'm not sure about the other posters in this thread, but I have not
trashed an idea. The particular proposal is hopeless to the extent
that it's not worth consideration.

 

[Justin Kim]

% Personally I think it's quite useful to have an alternative syntax for
% XSLT.

This is debatable, but irrelevant to my remarks. I'd say that it's

<snip>

I apologize for the confusion that I have caused. I did not mean to
respond to your post directly, but rather to the original post and the
people reading this thread in general. This is my fault in its
entirety. (I hope this explains the irrelevance.)

However, I agree on the fact that it is debatable. Otherwise we would
not be posting over this issue. Are you willing to share your insights
further?

..J