Re: p:step

/ Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh wrote:
|> A step looks like:
|>
|>   step := ($kind, with-input*, with-output*)
|
| Here I think the the 'with-*' is just extra syntax we don't
| need.  The containment of the input/output in the step doesn't
| require a "with-" prefix anymore than at the pipeline level.

Yeah, I flipped this back and forth in my head. By the same token,
XSLT doesn't need xsl:param and xsl:with-param.

I thought the general consensus was in favor of using with-*, but
I could happily abandon it.

|> Where $kind identifies the kind of process. That must either match the
|> name of some in-scope p:pipeline elment or match one of an
|> implementation-defined list of known process types.
|>
|>   with-input := ($name, $from, $href, {any content})
|
| Shouldn't the 'from' be consistent with the attribute use at the
| pipeline level for the 'input' construct?

From here isn't *declaring* a lable as p:input does in p:pipeline.
It's pointing at a label.

|> The valid names depend on the $kind of step. Each can either come from
|> the output of some other step or input (in which case the $from must
|> match one of those labels) or from a URI or from content. It must have
|> exactly one of those.
|>
|>   with-output := ($name, $label)
|
| Again, 'label' conflicts with 'name' for me...

Well, here we need two attributes:

  <p:step kind="xslt">
    ...
    <p:output name="result" label="s1output"/>
    ...
  <p:step>

  <p:step kind="xslt">
    ...
    <p:output name="result" label="s2output"/>
    ...
  <p:step>

I chose name/label, but if you have another pair in mind, that's fine.

Looking more closely at your examples, I find your use of name/from
*very* confusing:

   <p:step kind="p:xslt">
      <p:input name="input" from="request"/>
      <p:input name="stylesheet">...<p:input>
      <p:output name="url-request" from="output"/>
   </p:step>

In the first case, I think you're saying that the xslt component's
input named "input" comes from the thing labelled "request" and its
input named "stylesheet" comes from the inline content. Then you say
that its output named "output" has the label "url-requiest".

To me that's using "from" in two completely different ways that I find
really odd.

I'd prefer to say:

  The attribute "from" points to a label
  The attribute "XXX" provides a label
  The attribute "YYY" identifies the name of the component stream

In my case XXX=label and YYY=name.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
XML Standards Architect
Sun Microsystems, Inc.