Wendell Piez wrote:
At 04:08 AM 9/21/2007, Abel wrote:
And yes, many people, to their own misfortune, still manage to
struggle with XSLT 1.0
I bet that on reconsideration Abel might recast this to be somewhat
milder.
May I answer that in XSLT 2.0?
deep-equal(//abel, //abel[. castable as xs:milder])
returns true on all occasions.
There's nothing wrong with XSLT 1.0. As with anything, it's only a
"struggle" if you're working outside the boundaries of what it does
well -- a wide range of tasks, indeed wider than those for which it
was developed (which is part of what accounts for its present ubiquity).
Everything else being equal, Abel and others (including myself) will
generally prefer XSLT 2.0 because the range of tasks for which it is
well suited is wider than ever, while what was easy in XSLT 1.0
remains easy.
Maybe, since the OP is adept with C++, we could compare 1.0 and 2.0 as C
with C++? The major shift being in the former from "everything is an
untyped atomic type or an RTF" to "everything is a sequence of typed
entities", the latter going from "everything is a pointer" to
"everything is an pointer to an object". But now I am over simplifying
things ;)
This doesn't mean 1.0 is useless or a mistake any more than having a
GUI means the command line is now useless or a mistake. Indeed, as
long as XSLT 1.0 remains as widespread as it is (and my guess that 2.0
processors will displace 1.0 processors only gradually, and perhaps
never completely), programmers who know how to work within its
contraints will be at an advantage compared to those who can only use
2.0, having become dependent on its features, or never having known
the difference.
I totally agree. In my situation (and some may recall that from previous
statements on this list) I happen to have to build one half of my
stylesheets in 1.0 and the other half in 2.0. And, considering the
toolset, I try to refrain from anything fancy, like needing
exslt:node-set, because my stylesheets must be portable (not portable
enough yet, I do use document() and hence cannot use it on Opera, but
that is a well know M:D discussion ;)
Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma
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