Re: Match Pattern Proposal

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Norman Walsh writes:

> / Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> was heard to say:
> | For a number of reasons--including support of streaming processors and
> | consistency between viewports and other constructs--I believe we should
> | restrict XPaths to match patterns for everything but parameters.  As
> | such, here is what I think is a cohesive proposal:
>
> I'm not convinced.
>
> When I write a select expression on input, for-each, or viewport, I'm
> thinking "Ok, I've got this document in my hand, what nodes do I want
> to select out of it." I think it is more natural to write a select
> expression than a match pattern.

I've been using viewport for some years now, in the MT Pipeline
language, and

 a) It's hugely useful;
 b) It uses match semantics.

I find it _much_ more natural to write

 <xx:viewport attrNameAtIssue="div">
  . . .
 </xx>

than to write

 <xx:viewport attrNameAtIssue=".//div">
  . . .
 </xx>
 
which I believe is what I'd have to write if we go with 'select'
semantics.

ht
- -- 
 Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
                     Half-time member of W3C Team
    2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
            Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                   URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
[mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFSfmjkjnJixAXWBoRAjTjAJ4lA8uQtf2gT4wZVrb6k33pJ82JTACeP6H3
Z4Cn2kkH1IqTzDJTzo0Ggmc=
=AU5S
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Received on Thursday, 2 November 2006 14:00:09 UTC