Re: XPath 1.0 or 2.0

/ Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> was heard to say:
| I'm afraid that I've grown so used to having XPath 2.0 that I would be
| loath to be without it. It's not the schema-awareness or the type
| checking, it's the support for conditionals, regular expressions etc.

By my reconning, the implementation bar for XPath 1.0 is about ankle
high and the bar for XPath 2.0 is about waist high, so I'm a little
concerned about forcing all implementors to support XPath 2.0.

Of the folks that support the idea of using XPath 2.0 at the language
level, which of the following do you prefer:

1. The language (conditionals and other standard components that
   expose an XPath expression) uses XPath 2.0.

2. The language allows pipeline authors to choose XPath 1 or XPath 2.

3. The language allows implementors to choose XPath 1 or XPath 2.

Only choice 1 guarantees interoperability.

I feel pretty strongly that pipeline documents that don't use anything
but the standard components should be completely interoperable.

On that basis, I'd prefer a binary choice: XPath 1.0 or XPath 2.0
rather than some non-interoperable middle ground.

Having said that, my intuition is that the vast majority of the use
cases for XPath in conditionals and peepholing, etc. will amount to an
element test, possibily with some ancestry, and occasionally with a
few attribute tests. All entirely achievable with XPath 1.0.

So my preference, at the moment, is for XPath 1.0. But I'll vote
"concur" if it helps us get to consensus.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

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