Re: Options or parameters

On 5/3/07, Henry S. Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> We seem to be converging on the
>
>   option:parameter::pre-known:not-pre-known

Yes, but we need to say more about what "pre-known" means. Consider
the case of XSLT. Parameters are not pre-known to the XSLT component.
But they are pre-known to the XSLT stylesheet, and in most cases are
pre-known by author of the pipeline that calls the stylesheet. Bare
with me, this matters for what follows.

>   3) No more parameter importing -- it likewise serves no purpose --
>      all in-scope parameters are available to a step.

I don't like passing all parameters in scope by default, as I
mentioned during our call today.

Passing all the parameters in scope is useful when the pipeline author
doesn't know what parameters a stylesheet takes, and calls the
stylesheet assuming that whoever will the pipeline will know what the
stylesheet needs and will pass the right parameters to the pipeline.
If I remember correctly Norm mentioned some cases where this would be
desirable when using DocBook. But personally, this is a use case I
have never seen. I think that the 99% case is that when pipeline
authors call a stylesheet they know what parameters that stylesheet
takes, and they can bind those parameters explicitly in the step. So
passing everything in scope is not needed in the 99% case; let's not
do that by default.

Going one step further: given the lack of use cases asking for all
parameters in scope to be passed to a step, why don't we keep things
simple, and make parameters binding alway explicit?

Alex
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Received on Thursday, 3 May 2007 23:04:54 UTC