RE: Any prior art?: An upcoming patent for an XSL implementationtechnique

[Ramin Firoozye <ramin@wizen.com>]

Not to worry. There's a GNU project called 'XML Gnu Accelerator System'
that's been out for a year or so. It turns XSLT into emacs macros then runs
it. Something to do with molecular transformations. Fantastic performance. I
believe it qualifies as prior art.

ramin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean McGrath [mailto:sean.mcgrath@propylon.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 4:09 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Any prior art?: An upcoming patent for an XSL implementation
> technique
>
>
> I have just had an odd conversation with a Dr. Uvbin Hadson
> (a distant relative as it happens) from the Lifford Institute of
> Electrochemical Sciences.
>
> The conversation was both intriguing and worrying.
>
> Dr. Handson claims to have developed an implementation of XSLT 1.0
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116) that is now
> feature complete apart from some miscellaneous functions
> (unparsed-entity-uri() for example).
>
> But here is the kicker: the implementation is based on a patent pending
> trancoding of the infoset (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/)
> into molecular
> structures. Once transcoded into molecular form,
> the transformation essentially consists of the simultaneous application
> of nano-templates (basically chemical reactions) that transform
> the source XML per the XSLT stylesheet.
>
> Handson claims that the side-effect free nature of XSL is key
> to this implementation as all templates can be executed
> *simultaneously* to generate the result infoset very, very quickly.
> (http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/199906/msg00406.html).
> At the end of the process, a reverse transcoding takes place to
> convert the hydrocarbon compound back to serialized XML in
> UTF-8. The performance and scalability figures he cites are
> truly mind-boggling!
>
> Apparantly, the approach is based on treating XSL templates as
> nano-machines that exert force on the molecules in ways that
> can be controlled to implement particular transformations.
>
> Using something called the "Born-Oppenheimer approximation", if you
> know the positions r1, r2, .... rN of N nuclei representing element
> nodes, then E(r1, r2, .... rN) gives the potential energy of the
> system. Knowing the potential energy as a function of the nuclear
> positions, means you can determine and then control the forces acting
> on the individual nuclei. This allows you to control the evolution of
> theirs positions over time and thus implement arbitrary XSLT
> transformations.
>
> Unlike other workers in the field, who prefer diamond and isobutane
> for representing structures, Dr Hadson is experimenting with
> commodity hydrocarbons and sulphates for infoset representation
> e.g (CaSO4)H20 and c2H5Oh.
>
> Hadson himself is not in favour of patenting his method but he
> is under pressure from his employers to do so. Personally, I
> hope this stuff does not get patented or we could be in
> an analagous situation to the "gene wars". A US supreme
> court ruling from 1980 permits the patenting of some
> organisms found in nature...
>
> Hadson's methods seems to me to be certainly novel but I
> am not a guru is this area. Is anyone aware of any prior
> art that might skupper the patent plans?
>
> Dr Hadson does not subscribe to this list but he can be
> contacted at Uvbin.Hadson@propylon.com.
>
> regards,
> Sean McGrath
>
>
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