Re: [xslt] Any interest in an alternative syntax for XSLT?

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 12:06:30PM -0400, Phil Shafer wrote:
> Daniel Veillard writes:
> >  Is SLAX defined independantly ?  Do you have stable pointers to the 
> >spec ? 
> 
> SLAX is my creation, and the only spec was attached to the original
> email.  I'll htmlify it, put it on a web server, and post a link.
> 
> What sort of peer review do you have in mind?

  Outside of libxml2 :-)
  Something like posting to xml-dev and see what is happening.

> >    - this open the door to other 'I want my own representation in'
> >      which like in the case of 'binary XML' is not something I feel
> >      great about
> >    - the size and stability of that code base and associated specification
> 
> Both reasonable concerns.  The "me too" issue works against me,
> since there have been other attempts at defining alternative syntaxes,
> none of which has really gone anywhere.  Part of my desire to get
> this code into the libxslt base is to increase exposure and uptake
> for this syntax.
> 
> The other view, of course, would be that the reason past attempts have
> failed is that the problem isn't that big and doesn't need solving.  I
> disagree with this, and find working in slax much more straight
> forward, even after working with xslt for 4-5 years.  Most of the

  I doubt you will find many people arguing that they like to type XSLT
code. They may perfectly argue that tools ought to provide it instead,
and that's reasonnable. if you can go XSLT <-> SLAX both ways converter 
tools are probably the best approach.

> issues with scripts are related to xpath expressions, and slax keeps
> these expressions from getting lost in the angle brackets and
> attributes.
> 
> The second concern can only be addressed by review of the slax syntax
> and code, hopefully by the libxslt group.  I'm hoping to see slax
> being integrated in the source base with a "--with-slax" configure
> option.

  Assuming it was the case, how long would you help maintain the module
code ? 

Daniel

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