Re: XProc Editors Draft 2007-07-19: Section 3.2 Comments

Fixed, I think.

/ Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> was heard to say:
| Jeni Tennison wrote:
|>
|> Norman Walsh wrote:
|>> / Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> was heard to say:
|>> | Norman Walsh wrote:
|>> |> / Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> was heard to say:
|>> |> | I think this section needs to talk about the scope of pipeline
|>> type names in a
|>> |> | pipeline library: say that each pipeline in a pipeline library
|>> must have a
|>> |> | unique type, and talk about the scope of those pipeline names.
|>> A reference to
|>> |> | another section that talks about this in detail would be sufficient.
|>> |>
|>> |> Hmmm. I changed the first paragraph of 3.2 to read:
|>> |>
|>> |>   The scope of the names of step types is the pipeline. Each pipeline
|>> |>   processor has some number of built in step types and may declare
|>> |>   (directly, or by reference to an external library) additional step
|>> |>   types. All the step types in a pipeline must have unique names: it
|>> |>   is a static error (err:XS0036) if two declarations for the same step
|>> |>   type name appear in the same scope.
|>> |>
|>> |> I wonder if that helps.
|>> |
|>> | Not really :) It focuses on the step types in a (single) pipeline
|>> | rather than the step types in a pipeline *library*. Perhaps we can say
|>> | (not necessarily in this section) that a pipeline document with a
|>> | <p:pipeline> document element is equivalent to a <p:pipeline-library>
|>> | with all <p:import>s and <p:declare-step>s (and so on) moved into the
|>> | <p:pipeline-library>, and otherwise containing that (single)
|>> | <p:pipeline>. Then every pipeline document can be considered a
|>> | pipeline library, and we can say:
|>>
|>> That's not immediately appealing.
|>>
|>> Is this better:
|>>
|>>    The scope of the names of step types is the union of all the pipelines
|>>    and pipeline libraries available. Each pipeline...
|>
|> No, because pipeline libraries don't have names that are step types.
|
| Sorry, perhaps the rest of the paragraph would have made it clearer.
| Basically I think there are two problems with the paragraph:
|
| 1. It talks about individual pipelines rather than pipeline libraries.
|
| 2. It doesn't make clear that when an author defines a pipeline that
| pipeline's type is added to the set of step types, and therefore that
| a pipeline type cannot be the same as any other pipeline type in the
| pipeline library (and imported pipelines), and cannot be the same as a
| declared step type or a built-in step type.
|
| Perhaps it would be useful to break it down like that:
|
|   The scope of the names of the step types is the union of all the
|   pipelines and pipeline libraries available directly or via import.
|   Step types are:
|
|   * built-in to XProc, or
|   * declared using <p:declare-step> and implemented by the processor, or
|   * defined using <p:pipeline>
|
|   All the step types must have unique names: it is a static error
|   (err:XS0036) if any step type name appears twice in the same scope.
|
| Jeni
| -- 
| Jeni Tennison
| http://www.jenitennison.com

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | If youth is a fault, it is one soon
http://nwalsh.com/            | corrected.-- Goethe