• From: DavePawson <davep@d...>
• To: Michael Kay <mike@s...>
• Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:55:33 +0100

Michael Kay wrote:
>>> From http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116
>>>
>>  XSLT is not intended as a completely general-purpose XML
>>  transformation language. Rather it is designed primarily
>>  for the kinds of transformations that are needed when XSLT
>>  is used as part of XSL.
>>
> 
> I often quote this sentence as an example of where you need to read between
> the lines of a specification. Although I have no specific knowledge of how
> this sentence came to be there, I have always imagined that it was probably
> added as a result of a somewhat inconclusive debate about some language
> feature that someone considered either too general-purpose or too
> special-purpose; 


Folk lore has it that being JC, with the DSSSL background, the ideas
were brought across to XSL (as was).
I.e. it was intended to be an update to the transformation capabilities
of DSSSL, without Scheme.

Once XSL users realised its potential for HTML generation and other
more general transformational activities, a cry went out to separate
the transformation from the formatting; this being on the XSLT list
people in the main.

That's when XSL-FO and XSLT parted ways.

But that's only folk lore.

Ken? Hows your memory on this?




regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

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• References:
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  • RE: Saxon and Sun Serializer problems?
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