RE: May XSLT - 9.3 Values of Variables and Parameters

  I prefer to keep the statement in one place (4.1) that "the stylesheet
  module is treated as if the processing instructions and comments were not
  there". I'm never all that happy with "as if" formulations (I generally
  prefer to define a concept such as "the effective stylesheet" as being "the
  actual stylesheet minus comments and PIs"), but I'm even less happy with
  scattering this kind of thing around the spec in every place where it might
  make a difference - it leads people to wonder why it's expressed differently
  in different places. I'll see if the wording can be improved, but keeping it
  in one place.
  

I appreciate the concern that saying things more than once can lead to
inconsistencies, however in practice given the size of this suite of
documents most people are not going to read it in document order.
If they want to find out about variables (as I just did) they'll zoom in
on that bit and miss the relevant earlier definitions (I have in fact
read the whole doc in document order, but I also forgot most of it again:-)

Of course a bit of hyperlinking wouldn't go amiss: if you were to say "no
child nodes in the [effective stylesheet]" with the [] being a link to
some glossary entry that would be helpful I think.
In particular I think you should avoid using the word "empty" for this
and just say "has no child nodes" or even "no [effective] child nodes"
"empty" is so closely tied in XML-land to /> syntax for empty elemnts
that it is highly counter intuitive (even though consistent within the
document) to say that
<xsl:variable name="x">
<!-- hmm what should I put here -->
<?a PI perhaps? ?>
</xsl:variable>
is empty.

David
[PS no need to explicitly reply justifying any rewriting you do or don't
do, I wanted to float the suggestion but I'm happy to leave the
editorial details to you]

Received on Friday, 13 June 2003 18:03:00 UTC