Re: injecting options and parameters into XProc

Jim,

James Fuller wrote:
> the use case I am highlighting is that of execution configurability.
> 
> if I can use an analogy with Ant.

You can, but since I don't use Ant it won't mean much to me.

> the current method in xproc, as u describe, is akin to setting
> presetdef in Ant. That is setting default values of options within
> xproc code. This is a good thing.
> 
> to go further, with Ant presetdefs, I can use Ant properties to make
> these preset default values definable at from the commandline.

In XProc, when you invoke the pipeline from the command line, you can 
pass in values for the options declared on the pipeline. Those option 
values can be passed on to the steps that are invoked inside the pipeline.

In what way is this different from "making default values definable from 
the command line"?

Or are you talking about the options being XPath expressions that choose 
values from an input document? You can do that too (just remember to set 
the namespaces at the same time).

> having this is useful for;
> 
> * enabling fully configuration of xproc at parse time (options can
> remain invariant after values are parsed, so I see no big issue with
> this)
> 
> * u do not ask the person executing xproc, to have to know xproc, e.g.
> dig into the code and change things
> 
> as with any useful software, there should be a larger body of users
> just 'running' the script...which is what this use case highlights.

Yes, precisely. When you run the pipeline from the command line, you can 
set (a) XProc processor options, as defined by the processor, (b) 
pipeline options, as defined by the pipeline, (c) pipeline parameters, 
which you "just know" are used in XSLT stylesheets used by the pipeline.

I have a feeling I'm still missing your point. Can you spell out an 
example to show me what you mean?

Jeni
-- 
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com

Received on Monday, 8 October 2007 18:40:32 UTC