RE: [XSLTerrata] Undocumented xsl:sort/@lang incompatibility?

In my view this is a product issue and not a spec issue. A product that
chooses to maintain backwards-compatibility here can do so while remaining
both within the letter and the spirit of both specifications. The spec
doesn't require products to be backwards-compatible, but that's true
wherever things are implementation-defined. 

Incidentally, even if the rules for selecting a language were identical
between XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 and completely prescriptive in both cases, that
would not guarantee compatible behaviour: for some languages (Swedish is an
example) the Java collation rules changed between JDK 1.4 and JDK 1.5, so
you can actually get incompatible behaviour from the same XSLT
processor/version depending on which JDK you are using.

In the case of Saxon, a change in default behaviour was introduced in
version 8.8 and announced in the release documentation

http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/changes/intro88/xslt88.html

together with instructions on how to retain the previous default behaviour.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-qt-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tony Graham
> Sent: 27 May 2007 20:59
> To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
> Subject: [XSLTerrata] Undocumented xsl:sort/@lang incompatibility?
> 
> 
> Section 10, "Sorting", of XSLT 1.0 [1] includes:
> 
>    if no lang value is specified, the language should be determined
>    from the system environment
> 
> Section 13.1.3 "Sorting Using Collations", of XSLT 2.0 [2] includes:
> 
>    If none of the collation, lang or case-order attributes is present,
>    the collation is chosen in an implementation-defined way.
> 
> This difference in expectation in the absence of the 'lang' 
> attribute (which recently caused unexpected results for me) 
> is not listed in Appendix J, "Changes from XSLT 1.0 
> (Non-Normative)", of XSLT 2.0 [3].
> Should it be?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> 
> Tony Graham.
> ======================================================================
> Tony.Graham@MenteithConsulting.com   http://www.menteithconsulting.com
> 
> Menteith Consulting Ltd             Registered in Ireland - No. 428599
> Registered Office: 13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. 
> Dublin, Ireland 
> ======================================================================
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#sorting
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xslt20-20070123/#xsl-sort
> [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xslt20-20070123/#changes
>

Received on Sunday, 27 May 2007 23:23:16 UTC