Some recent comments on this list about XSLT compact syntaxes got me
thinking. Why not use XQuery as a compact syntax for XSLT? XQuery's not
really great as a transformation tool since it lacks XSLT's declarative
rule-matching engine.
But with functional extensions to XQuery, I think we could build that,
either in XQuery itself, or as a processor extension. It shouldn't
require any language changes to get something useful. XSLT templates
could be represented as associations of path expressions and XQuery
functions.
It might look something like this:
<xsl:template match="//foo" priority="2">...</xsl:template>
=>
xsl:template ("//foo", function () { ... }, 2)
<xsl:stylesheet> ... templates ... </xsl:stylesheet>
=>
let $default-mode := xsl:stylesheet ($templates, ...)
It might be simplest to make all modes explicit?
<xsl:apply-templates select="xyz" />
=>
xsl:apply-templates (xyz, $default-mode)
In an ideal world, there could be a compact syntax that represents all
of some version of XSLT.
Some differences that might be difficult to paper over:
Templates accept named parameters with default values, while functions
only allow positional
parameters and all must be provided in every invocation.
I think a "translator" from XSLT to XSLT-Q (?) could supply defaulted
parameter values in the apply-templates calls; this would lose some of
the compactness benefit, but preserve the semantics.
Tunnel parameters don't have any analogue in XQuery. I don't see how to
provide that feature in XQuery without language extensions, but maybe
you have an idea, Dmitre? You always seem to be able to achieve a lot
with very little.
There must be some other XSLT instructions that aren't directly
available in XQuery: xsl:key, xsl:result-document, but I think these
could probably provided as XQuery functions in some way, without I
admit, having really thought through all the implications.
I'm idly contemplating trying to hatch a proof-of-concept of some sort.
I'm counting on the wisdom of this list to deter me from wasting my time
on a terrible idea. On the other hand perhaps it is a great idea and
somebody else will be inspired to implement it, saving me the trouble :)
What do you think?
-Mike
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