Re: [xsl] ANNOUNCE: Petition to withdraw xsl:script from XSLT 1.1

[Steve Muench <Steve.Muench@oracle.com>]

| At 13:31 01/03/2001 -0800, Steve Muench wrote:
| >I (personally, not speaking for the WG here) don't happen to
| >be a believer in some kind of look-it-up-and-magically-download-
| >the-right-(trusted?)-implementation-from-some-central-website-
| >for-the-language-my-processor-can-support-for-the-chip-architecture-
| >and-OS-that-I'm-currently-running-(while-I'm-using-this-on-a-plane)
| >scheme to download and run the "right" implementation of some function.
| 
| Nevertheless, xsl:script allows for precisely that through it's src
| attribute. Given that, don't you think that relying on extension namespaces
| pointing to an RDDL document containing 1) information on how a human being
| can get the extension should he want to do it by hand and 2) a pointer to
| implementations of the extension (possibly in several languages so that the
| processors can choose the one they know about, or their favoured one)
| should the processor be allowed to fetch extensions automatically (possibly
| only within a trusted network) is far superior to what xsl:script offers ?

The 'src' attribute purports no magic beyond the standard URI mechanism.

The implements-prefix="foo" points to a specific *namespace* URI
for the function "library". A human-assisted process to download
the right bits would only need this NS Uri as a key into whatever
information you'd want to stage, but I don't envision the
XSLT processor firing up modal dialogs or web browsers in the
middle of stylesheet execution to allow the user to "Please pick
which implementation of this function you'd like to use..."
before continuing along its merry way with the current transformation.

Disclaimer: Speaking personally, not for the WG

______________________________________________________________
Steve Muench, Lead XML Evangelist & Consulting Product Manager
BC4J & XSQL Servlet Development Teams, Oracle Rep to XSL WG
Author "Building Oracle XML Applications", O'Reilly
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orxmlapp/