> 
> > The pure mathematician (David) wins that point.
> 
> OK if you turn up in Oxford, I'll buy you a beer:-)
> 
> > The reason I objected to David's going on about sets not having order is that 
> > he seemed to be claiming that node sets do not have order.
> 
> I didn't just seem to be, I was!
> 
> 
> I find it much easier to understand XSL semantics for myself, and to
> explain them to others, if I take this point of view.
> I think the original confusion in the "nearest ancester thread" came
> about precisely because people were not thinking in this way.

With this, and after carefully browsing the XPath spec, I'm agreed.

Game. Set. Match.

I'd never really thought clearly about this, and I responded without pausing 
to think clearly.  I'd say I won't do it again, but I'd be lying.

The funny part is that I (and colleagues) spent a considerable time pounding 
my head over the spec's obtuse wording with regard to reverse axes and 
proximity position in implementing (or rather fixing 4XPath months ago.)

At that point I think it was actually made it easier for me to think of the 
node set in terms of having an intrinsic order.  The proof of it is in 
4XPath's implementation, which I'm pretty sure gets that mess quite right.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python



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