[Bug 6027] [XPath] Extensions and Conformance

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6027





--- Comment #7 from Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>  2009-01-15 13:09:55 ---
In the database community, there seems to be a high level of user tolerance for
vendor extensions to standard languages. Users say they want portability, but
when it comes down to it, they put other requirements higher on their list. So
this proposal seems reasonable for XQuery. 

But in the world of programming languages, especially for use on the web, and
especially in the XML community, I get the impression that users regard vendor
extensions as poison, unless the extensions are implemented within a framework
that allows applications to remain portable - which for syntax extensions is
not the case.

For XPath there is the additional complication that every host language
(including those defined by W3C working groups) seems to want to define its own
subset and/or superset. I believe it is very much in users' interests that
XPath should be the same language wherever it is used. I would like to see a
much stronger statement that syntax extensions to XPath are banned. Of course,
we can't stop people defining XPath-like languages that have a different
syntax, but we should come down very firmly against anyone describing such a
language as XPath. 


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Received on Thursday, 15 January 2009 13:10:05 UTC