On 7/23/07, cknell(_at_)onebox(_dot_)com <cknell(_at_)onebox(_dot_)com> wrote:
You do yourself a favor when you listen to criticism, especially
well-intentioned criticism from a source with experience in the field.
Oh, my statement on the need to learn was not a criticism -- just
stating a fact.
--
Charles Knell
cknell(_at_)onebox(_dot_)com - email
-----Original Message-----
From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
Sent: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 06:52:36 -0700
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] Vendor extensions for XSLT - higher order functions
> FXSL, unfortunately, is so powerful that I think many "ordinary" users find
> it rather daunting. A gentler introduction, using examples from the world of
> commercial IT systems rather than computer science, would help to sell it to
> the general public.
There is nothing so powerful in FXSL and it implements some most basic concepts.
Concepts like: fold, map, compose, repeat/iterate -- form the
alphabet of programming.
Certainly, if someone has arrived at grade 5 in school and still
doesn't know the alphabet, this person will find reading even ordinary
text rather "daunting".
To summarize, FXSL provides a big potential to learn, requires
learning, and this is even a bigger value than simply the provided
functionality.
--
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
---------------------------------------
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
---------------------------------------
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk
-------------------------------------
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what
you're doing is work or play
On 7/21/07, Michael Kay <mike(_at_)saxonica(_dot_)com> wrote:
> > I am curious to know why some XSLT vendors have implemented
> > one or more XSLT extension functions with their product to
> > make for the implementation of higher-order functions (HOF) in XSLT.
>
> In the case of Saxon, it was needed by an XQuery user, and availability in
> XSLT was just a spin-off. It's not possible to use the FXSL approach in
> XQuery because it relies on xsl:apply-templates. In fact, this kind of
> capability is needed much more in XQuery because even without FXSL, there
> are many things you can do with xsl:apply-templates to handle dynamic
> content that have no simple solution in XQuery.
>
> In fact, in business applications I far more often see the need for
> saxon:evaluate() (in both XSLT and XQuery) where expressions are constructed
> at run-time from strings. But saxon:evaluate() is easy to understand, and it
> often gets used to solve problems where compile-time higher-order functions
> would be a cleaner and more efficient solution.
>
> FXSL, unfortunately, is so powerful that I think many "ordinary" users find
> it rather daunting. A gentler introduction, using examples from the world of
> commercial IT systems rather than computer science, would help to sell it to
> the general public.
>
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
>
>
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Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
---------------------------------------
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
---------------------------------------
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk
-------------------------------------
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what
you're doing is work or play
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