Re: [xml-dev] Why do W3C specifications have "implementation defined"par

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

On 08/04/2010 13:06, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> In many of the W3C specifications there are parts that are "implementation defined."
>
> To give one example, in the XSLT specification it says this about the<xsl:message>  element [1]:
>

well sometimes one suspects that it is because the committee couldn't 
agree on something.

However in the example you gave being the destination of xsl:message 
output, that interacts with the host environment so is intrinsically 
implementation specific. How could it be defined?
The XSLT spec assumes nothing about the host environment, no assumption 
that there is for example a file system accessible so it is hard to see 
how you could define in a way that makes sense on all systems a standard 
location for any output.

Similarly XSLT has a notion of parameters that may be set externally but 
there is no mechanism specified or specifiable within the XSLT spec as 
to how they may be set,


David


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