Re: is that a fork in the road?

[ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)]

"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> writes:

> Sitting listening to Henry's speech as I write.
> 
> "XML trajectory and SGML trajectory as ... 
> affected by slowness of getting style sheet 
> language out"...
> 
> I wonder how long that trajectory would have 
> been if:
> 
> 1.  XSLT had not been primarly a means to 
> downtranslate to HTML (something OmniMark 
> already did well and a bit better); that is, 
> a common existing renderer made XSLT a slam 
> dunk compared to DSSSL.
> 
> 2.  XSLT had not been designed and overviewed 
> by many of the same people who took the decade 
> long march on DSSSL.  That is, it is easy to 
> walk on water when you know where the stumps are.
> 
> At some point, the self-congratulating, "look at 
> what we have done" aggrandizing of XML has to 
> be  seen for what it is:  cheerleading to a 
> very old and very done deal by the time "we" 
> got here to carry a ball the last six inches 
> across the goal line.

Sorry if I came across as self-aggranddizing in that comment -- I was
there and I _certainly_ know, and regularly publicly acknowledge, how
much XSLT owes to DSSSL, both in the strict technical sense ("XSLT has
DSSSL's processing model with XML syntax") and personal (a substantial
portion of the XSL WG during the design of XSLT were at least DSSSL
users if not DSSSL standard authors).

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
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	    Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
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