- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:17:37 +0200
- To: public-webapps@w3.org
On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 12:28 AM, Martin Kadlec <bs-harou@myopera.com> wrote: > Only reason why XPath is "dead" on the web is because there is not (yet) easy way to use it. It's worth noting that XPath in browsers is XPath 1.0 which doesn't have a smooth evolutionary path to XPath 2.x, so browser XPath is an evolutionary dead end unless forked on a different evolutionary path than W3C XPath. Even though XPath might be very important to its user base, in the big picture it isn't the kind of Web platform feature that would generate a lot of Web developer mindshare if a browser vendor invested in it. Chances are that investments in CSS always have a higher return on investment (in terms of Web developer mindshare) than investments in XPath. In this situation, I expect there to be no enthusiasm for polishing what's an evolutionary dead end (XPath 1.0) or for launching something incompatible that'd require a lot of up-front work (XPath 2.x) while still having to support the existing evolutionary dead end. Furthermore, XPath 2.x would be a slippery slope towards dependencies on XML Schema. Even though it's an optional feature, it's prudent to leave a wide safety margin around optional features. Otherwise, there's a risk of getting sucked into implementing bad optional features anyway. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2011 08:18:19 UTC