[Bug 2149] [XSLT] what parts of the dynamic context must be stable?

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2149





------- Additional Comments From mike@saxonica.com  2005-09-14 23:04 -------
I think the reason the text is worded as it is is to avoid having two normative
statements, one in XSLT and one in XPath, that could conflict if the specs get
out of sync. By saying:

XPath requires that certain aspects of the dynamic context are stable during
the evaluation of an expression. For example, the current date and time, ...

we are saying: go and read the XPath spec if you want the definitive list of
things that are defined to be stable; but if you're in a hurry, these are the
sort of things we're talking about.

Regarding your point 4, I think it's very important that we *do* send readers to
the place where something is defined normatively, rather than having normative
statements in several specs that could potentially conflict.

The antecedent of "these values" is "the aspects of the dynamic context that
XPath requires to be stable". I would have thought that the use of "For example"
at the start of the second sentence made this fairly clear.

The real meat of your comment, I think, is that XPath does not in fact contain
the definition we are referring to. It doesn't say that current-date-and-time is
stable, or that available documents is stable. I thought it did, and I'm
surprised by the omission. In fact, it seems in most cases to be F+O that says
these things are stable (by virtue of the fact that the functions providing
access to these parts of the dynamic context give stable results). It's a bit
convoluted for us to refer to F+O for this information, so we'll have to take a
joint look at it to see how to handle it editorially.

Received on Wednesday, 14 September 2005 23:05:00 UTC