Re: [xslt] XSLT 2.0

[Tony Graham <Tony Graham MenteithConsulting com>]

On Thu, Jun 05 2008 07:57:07 +0100, Steve Ball explain com au wrote:
...
> I also don't have a lot of time for this, but can't we (meaning the  
> whole libxml2 community) share the effort to achieve this? The problem  

There probably are enough libxslt users that there would be quite a few
of those users who could gainfully contribute, but that raises the
question of why there aren't more than the dedicated few currently
working on libxslt.

What time I personally have for unpaid open source work I need to spend
on the xmlroff XSL formatter, though since xmlroff could use an XSLT 2.0
processor, I'm not disinterested in a libxslt that does XSLT 2.0.

> can be broken down into modules and I believe that at least some of 

But someone or some group would first need to work out what they are and
how they fit together.
 
> these may be implemented independently. For example, XPath 2 has a new  
> syntax, plus sequences, FLWR expressions, etc, but the language is  
> separate to the XPath operators and functions. Also, XSLT 2 would need  
> to be upgraded to support temporary trees, sequences, etc, but many of  
> the new elements could be implemented separately, such as for-each- 
> group, regular expressions, etc.

There's also the whole W3C XML Schema-ness that underlies much of XSLT
2.0 and that was seen as a sticking point for a 2.0 version five years
ago [1].

The static and dynamic error checking and reporting in the terms of the
error codes in the specs would also have to be worked out before people
dove into separate modules.

> It goes without saying that it would be preferable not to fork  
> development for XSLT 2, but rather to create a branch to later be  
> merged back into the main project development.

I'm more inclined to suspect it would be a branch that never merged back
into the XSLT 1.0 trunk, though I also suspect it would try very hard to
maintain the same xsltApplyStylesheet(), etc., API so the 2.0 version
could be a drop-in replacement for the current libxslt.

> Who is willing to help out with this effort?

I would be willing, but I have other commitments on my open source free
time.


Tony Graham                         Tony Graham MenteithConsulting com
Director                                  W3C XSL FO SG Invited Expert
Menteith Consulting Ltd
XML, XSL and XSLT consulting, programming and training
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[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xslt/2003-July/msg00008.html