Re: [xml-dev] what's missing in XML? What's coming?

[Michael Sokolov <sokolov@ifactory.com>]

A related issue - I think it's related? - is handling binary content.  We have run into a number of use cases where it would be convenient to be able to process images - at the very least to test for their existence, but maybe also read in and write out unchanged - but doc-available() and doc() in xslt don't allow this, I think.  We've worked around with java extension functions in Saxon, which is fine, but wouldn't it be better to work in some binary support (does unparsed text do this? not sure) into the language.

-Mike

On 1/3/2012 7:18 AM, Michael Kay wrote:

4F02F20B.3040706@saxonica.com" type="cite"> On 03/01/2012 11:15, David Lee wrote:

BE50CDBB-87AE-4E11-9263-9045ECC82A21@calldei.com" type="cite">

The *purpose* of XDM is to be the input to XQuery and XSLT. They are
only defined to operate over XDM instances. I think I must not be

Try sending a sequence, non document node or atomic type as the primary input to xquery or xslt.

Not supported, very annoying for languages that as you say whose purpose is process is processing XDM

When you say "primary input", I guess you mean the initial context item.

The initial context item can be any item, for both XSLT and XQuery. It can't be a sequence of items; but there's an easy workaround since both XSLT and XQuery allow global parameters to be set to any sequence.

If you're having problems here they are more likely to be problems with a particular API or product than with the language specs themselves.

Michael Kay
Saxonica