[XSLT2.0] XML versions and XSLT stylesheet as a data model instance

Section 1 says:


  [Definition: A transformation in the XSLT language is expressed in the
  form of a stylesheet, whose syntax is well-formed XML [XML 1.0]
  conforming to the Namespaces in XML Recommendation [XML Namespaces
  1.0].] 


Is it intentional that a stylesheet has to be xml 1.0, so presumably
may not be expressed in xml 1.1 (or later) even though source and result
documents may be xml 1.1 (if the system supports that)

Section 4.1 says

   Construction of the data model is outside the scope of this
   specification, so XSLT 2.0 places no formal requirements on an XSLT
   processor to accept input from either XML 1.0 documents or XML 1.1
   documents or both.

This leads to a more general question, should the stylesheet modules be
instances of the data model (rather than XML documents matching the
production in the XML spec). If they were defined this way, 4.1 would
apply and so the xml version number would be unconstrained (as would one
or two other things presently, such as white space handling, but that is
the subject of a separate comment)


In practice several systems allow in-memory modification of the
stylesheet as a DOM of some sort, after it has been parsed but before it
is applied, so specifying that the stylesheet is an instance of the DM
might in fact be closer to current practice than specifying that it must
be a document matching the productions in the XML spec.


David


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Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2003 10:20:53 UTC