Re: Give 'em some rope (was [xsl] ANNOUNCE: Petition to withdrawxsl:script from XSLT 1.1)

[Charles Reitzel <creitzel@mediaone.net>]

At 07:45 PM 3/2/01 +0100, Robin Berjon wrote:
>At 12:27 02/03/2001 -0500, Charles Reitzel wrote:
>>I think this argument might be falling into the category of
>>giving-us-enough-rope-to-hang-ourselves.  <xsl:script> is probably 
>>one of the less dangerous features of XSLT.
>
>I do Perl at least half of the day, seven days a week so I'm usually
>all for giving people enough rope to hang themselves, and then some.
>But if these things are to be web broswers, then we're giving people
>(and browser vendors) enough rope to hang us. I don't understand
>your point about xsl:script being on of the least dangerous features of XSLT.

I hear ya.  Although my background is C++, of late I do Perl working days.
One of the things I do is act as code cop, and keep unnecessary Perl
weirdness out of the code base.  Something C++ developers have had to do
ever since when.  I think templates can get kinda interesting.  But, you're
right, <xsl:script> is probably on the dangerous end.

>>You might not approve, but plenty of people code JSPs, which are
>>probably an uglier embedding of Java than <xsl:script>.
>
>... a gazillion ways of embedding code within pages ...
>Experience shows that this tends to bring people to put more 
>than just presentation logic into their pages ...
>
>What I'd like to see is a cleaner separation, a la xbind. That 
>would help a lot achieve more portable stylesheets, and it's
>reusable within other contexts.

My experience in web development has been pretty good in this regard.  The
groups I have worked with have, luckily, made the modest efforts necessary
to achieve a decent degree of separation between GUI and business logic.  It
pays off within the same development cycle.  

So I appreciate your position.  I just don't think you can legislate it, so
to speak, without making XSLT less useful for quick, one-off web pages, data
feeds, etc.  These kinds of quick turn-around jobs are a part of life in
software.  Sometimes they can be fun.

It may also be a way of reaching out to the HTML development community that,
so far, hasn't really embraced XML/XSLT.  Just like XQuery attempts to be
familiar to SQL developers, <xsl:script> attempts to look and act like
<html:script>.   These are good things.

>-- robin b.
>By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other 
>dwarves began to suspect Hungry.

Any Clash fans out there?

take it easy,
Charles Reitzel