"Michael Kay" <mhk(_at_)mhk(_dot_)me(_dot_)uk> wrote in message
news:000001c38fd9$4214a3f0$6401a8c0(_at_)pcukmka(_dot_)(_dot_)(_dot_)
This is what items of a sequence really are: links or
references to the instances (the inclusion of atomic values
here can be trivially defined --
by definition) that the sequence "contains".
So we know what an item of a sequence is but we are afraid to
call it with its real name?
I state that if the XSLT 2.0 specification fails to explain
this in detail and does not enforce the right terminology,
this will affect the correct understanding of sequences and
will cause confusion leading to mistakes for significant part
of the XSLT programmer community in their daily work. For
most of us this ultimately means frustration, lost hours and money.
Can this be prevented?
The Data Model specification is in Last Call, and if you feel this point
needs clarification then a comment to that effect would be entirely in
order.
Probably someone with proven success with the WG could post this.
I am definitely not the right person -- sometimes ago I wrote a comment that
distinct-nodes() is of little use because the order in which the distinct
nodes are returned is implementation dependent.
The result of this all was that "In the end the WGs decided to remove the
function" ...
I think that regardless of the node-reference datatype being revealed in the
XPath Data Model, there could be a good explanation in the XSLT 2.0
specification -- probably in the section dealing with xsl:sequence.
=====
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev.
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list