Re: [xml-dev] Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, usi

[Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>]

Michael, hello.

On 2013 Oct 18, at 16:11, Michael Kay wrote:

>> * XSLT is just plain ugly, both in the sense of being 'jaggy' to read on the screen, and being verbose, so that you don't get that much real code onto a screen in an editor window, so that I, at least, find it easy to get lost within a file.  I've whined about this on this list, at various intervals, for about a decade (sorry, people -- I'm still taking the medicine), without anyone showing much sign of agreeing with me.  I've even gone to the extent of creating an alternative syntax, so great was my irritation <http://nxg.me.uk/dist/lx/>, but I've never had many takers.  Oh well....
> 
> Well, XSLT 2.0 typically reduces the size to about a third of what it was; sadly there are still lots of people basing their perceptions on XSLT 1.0. For many transformations, the XSLT 2.0 code is very substantially more concise than the same code written in say Java or Perl.

I'm probably guilty of that, so I'll make a point of using XSLT 2.0 the next time I need a bit of XSLT (presuming I don't decide that that's the time to explore SSAX).  If that 'about a third' remotely matches my eventual experience, I promise I'll be very impressed!

I still think XSLT is plug ugly, of course, but that's a distinct and highly subjective point.

All the best,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK