Re: Inputs/outputs and auxiliary documents

/ Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh wrote:
|> Alex proposes, if I understood correctly, that we can solve both of
|> these problems if we make the auxiliary document relationship
|> explicit:
|> <p:pipeline>
|>   <p:input name="doc"/>
|>   <p:output name="output"/>
|>   <p:step name="p:xslt">
|>     <p:input name="document" label="$doc"/>
|>     <p:input name="stylesheet" href="generator.xsl"/>
|>     <p:output name="output" label="fragment"/>
|>     <p:aux-output href="frag.xsl"/>
|>   </p:step>
|>   <p:step name="p:xslt">
|>     <p:input name="document" label="$doc"/>
|>     <p:input name="stylesheet" href="base.xsl"/>
|>     <p:aux-input href="frag.xsl"/>
|>     <p:output name="output" label="$output"/>
|>   </p:step>
|> </p:pipeline>
|
| Yes.  This was what I was thinking.
|
|> P.S. I actually think we should just use p:input/p:output for this
|> purpose. An p:input or p:output element with no name and an href
|> attribute would serve the purpose and wouldn't require a new element
|> name. They are, after all, inputs and outputs.
|
| I agree with this as well.
|
| What I'd propose is this:
|
|   1. Every output is required to have a label/id that can be used for
|      creating input dependencies.

For auxiliary outputs, I'm not sure the label is required. The fact
that step A produces "module.xsl" is sufficient. Some other step can
consume it. Of course, if the output doesn't have an ID, then you
can't use it as an (primary) input somewhere else.

|   2. Every output can have an optional 'href' for labeling it with
|      a URI that will, in use, be assumed to be the base URI of the
|      document.
|
| This means that input referencing is exactly the same in all steps
| and that "auxillary documents"--those by names, are really for
| XML technologies (e.g. XSLT) where they use URI values to reference
| documents.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
XML Standards Architect
Sun Microsystems, Inc.