- From: Gavin Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>
- Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 14:27:26 -0500
- To: Chris.Lilley@sophia.inria.fr
- CC: bosak@atlantic-83.eng.sun.com, www-style@w3.org
>> It's a mistake to put DSSSL into the same bag as scripting languages. >> Yes, DSSSL is turing-complete; yes, it's a programming language. But >> a script language (at least the way I use the term) is procedural; >> DSSSL very definitely is not. DSSSL is entirely functional and >> entirely side-effect-free. Nothing ever happens in a DSSSL >> stylesheet. The stylesheet is one giant function whose value is an >> abstract, device-independent, nonprocedural description of the >> formatted document that gets fed as a specification (a declaration, if >> you will) of display areas to downstream rendering processes. > >Jon, what an excellent and concise overview. Would you give permission >for a (duly attributed) quote on the W3C Style page. There is a very interesting report at DEC (maybe 33 or 36) that talks about building a word processor built using a functional language (same langauge for markup and formatting, but nevertheless). This report was written around '86 from memory, and reasonable performance was achieved then...
Received on Tuesday, 4 February 1997 14:29:35 UTC