Re: XPath 1.0 or 2.0

Norman Walsh wrote:
> / 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.
> 

I can live with 2.0 being the only choice but I think others can't.

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

My choice would be for a 2.5 that allows implementors who only
want to use XPath 2.0 to have the same compatibility story with
pipelines authored with the XPath version set to 1.0.

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

I think author needs to declare their intent so that implementations
can either reject the pipeline because they don't support 2.0 or
have a compatibility story because they *only* support 2.0.

--Alex Milowski

Received on Sunday, 14 May 2006 21:53:07 UTC