[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 4079] Support EXSLT with libexslt

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4079





------- Comment #11 from m.david at xmlhacker.com  2007-06-21 04:15 PDT -------
PLEASE NOTE: In a recent post to XSL-List and EXSLT-DevList regarding the
stability of the EXSLT spec, Dr. Michael Kay [http://saxonica.com] 

>> If it has a problem, it's that it's been too stable... There's quite a lot
in there that is a bit tentative and has been in that state for some years
and could do with firming up. However, it does distinguish stable
specifications from the more tentative proposals. The specs are a bit
informal, which means you may get interoperability issues across
implementations in corner cases, but you're unlikely to hit serious
backwards compatibility issues because it's an informal spec so as a vendor
you always have the choice whether to implement any changes or not.

The other issue of course is that many of the EXSLT functions become
obsolete when you move to XSLT 2.0, so if you put them into a 1.0
implementation now you may be committing yourself to carry them forward into
a future 2.0 implementation where they are (in many cases) no longer needed
except for backwards compatibility. <<

In regards to the second paragraph, it would be impossible to know what plans
Apple might have for supporting XSLT 2.0, so this is obviously something that
would need to be considered from a strategic level more so than a technical
level, but my guess is that regardless of this decision, the reality of
continuing to provide the libexslt library alongside any future implementation
of XSLT 2.0 would be less of a concern, especially if that future XSLT 2.0
support were to come as a direct extension to the libxslt/libexslt library
itself.


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