- From: Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
- Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:16:07 -0400
- To: public-xml-processing-model-wg@w3.org
- Message-ID: <m2641mvos8.fsf@nwalsh.com>
See http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/10/04-minutes
W3C[1]
- DRAFT -
XML Processing Model WG
Meeting 86, 4 Oct 2007
Agenda[2]
See also: IRC log[3]
Attendees
Present
Alessandro, Paul, Norm, Mohamed, Henry, Richard, Alex, Rui, Andrew
Regrets
Chair
Norm
Scribe
Norm
Contents
* Topics
1. Accept this agenda?
2. Accept minutes from the previous meeting?
3. Next meeting: telcon 11 October 2007
4. Review of XSLT streaming requirements
5. Comment 30: Parameter inputs as strings
6. Comment 28: Determining whether a pipeline has a (defaulted)
output
7. Comment 1: An unfulfilled requirement maybe? (p:exec)
8. Comment 6: Bindings for pipeline inputs
9. Comment 23: p:add-xml-base with relative=true
10. Any other business?
* Summary of Action Items
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Accept this agenda?
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/27-agenda
Accepted.
Accept minutes from the previous meeting?
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/27-minutes
Accepted.
Next meeting: telcon 11 October 2007
Mohamed gives regrets.
Review of XSLT streaming requirements
Murray reviewed it, but suggested that someone with more implementation
experience should also take a look.
<scribe> ACTION: Alex to review before the face-to-face. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action01[6]]
Paul: Discounted hotel reservations for the face-to-face expired
yesterday.
Norm: Yes, and hotel rooms are ahrd to come by that week; good luck!
... Who's coming?
Henry, Norm, Paul, Alex, Richard is tentative
Richard: Comments to the comments list, but many of them turn into long
discussions.
Norm: I think it's ok if we only have admin on the WG list. New last call
comments should go on the ocmments list, I think.
Mohamed: Where are we on the test suite?
Norm: I'm generating new ones as I work through my impl; I encourage
others to send them in using the test format.
Some discussion of the test suite.
<scribe> ACTION: Norm to arrange for the tests on tests.xproc.org to be in
Subversion so that anyone can update them. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action02[7]]
Comment 30: Parameter inputs as strings
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/lastcall/comments#030
Norm describes the issue. Is symphathetic.
Henry: I'm not sympathetic. I wish we could undo some of the architecture
changes that XSLT has *already* imposed on us.
... I think parameters have ended up swamping what was otherwise a fairly
clean design.
Henry: Basically, my view is that this problem is the thin edge of a long
and complicated issue dealing with inputs of an unknown arity.
... I can think of at least three ways to solve it and we'll need to do it
in V.next. I'd rather not do it at the last minute for XSLT when we'll
need to do it later.
... I'm just skeptical of the whole thing; the cost-benefit ratio is
hugely out of whack.
Alex: What XSLT really needs is a way to associate a name with a arbitrary
input.
... We've removed arbitrary inputs so we'd have to invent some much more
heavyweight mechanism to do that.
... I'm with Henry in some ways; I wonder if we should consider the
ability to bind some number of documents with some number of names.
Henry: I think we can do it in V.next in any one of at least three ways as
I outlined in email.
... It'll take time to think them through.
Norm and Henry discuss how some implementors allow for XSLT parameters to
be bound to files.
Norm: You can work around this with a generated stylesheet, of course.
Henry: I don't think now is the time to design the general solution.
Alex: It allows documents in under the covers.
Norm: I don't know what you mean by under the covers.
Richard: XSLT says that its implementation defined how parameters get
passed in from outside. AFAICT, there's no requirement accept any kind of
parameters.
... Mine only allows you to pass in strings. For things that you run from
the command line, there's no obvious way to pass in anything else.
... If we say this is going to work, that means you're saying your XSLT
implementation has to be able to accept things that aren't strings.
... Otherwise you'll get interoperability problems.
<Zakim> ht, you wanted to ask about the api issue
Henry: At the moment if I write parameter name=foo
select=.//pset[@foo=baz] I get an element node which gets stringed and I
get a string.
... How will I tell if there's an attempt to pass something other than a
string.
Richard: We'd have to change the language, saying that things selected
don't get turned into strings so you have to use string(). There are
several possibilities.
Straw poll: Do you support allowing non-string parameters?
Results: Y 4, N 4, C: 1
Norm: I don't see a consensus to make a change to the spec.
Propose: Not in V1.
No objections.
<scribe> ACTION: Henry to reply to the commenter. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action03[9]]
Comment 28: Determining whether a pipeline has a (defaulted) output
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/lastcall/comments#028
Scribe notes that the numbers got messed up.
Richard: Like Henry, I'd like very simple pipelines to be simple. So I
don't want to have to put in input and output statements in those cases.
... I constructed a hard case, but I don't really want to throw out the
mechanism.
Norm: I can see that, but I want a solution that doesn't require the depth
of analysis that Richard's example would require.
There's some question of whether this only applies to pipelines in
libraries.
Richard: Henry suggested that you might only be allowed to do this in the
top-level pipeline. But that doesn't really help.
Alex: Couldn't we just outlaw circularity?
Richard: Yes, we could say that the only circumstance where you can't do
it is the one where you can't figure it out.
... But simple recursion is allowed.
PGrosso, we could hear you :-)
Alex: We could say that circularities must be explicitly broken. It's not
straightforward to detect, but we coudl have a blanket statement about it.
Henry: The way it ends up working is that we revise the statement about
how pipeline outputs default to say that they default to the output of the
last contained step provided that that can be uniquivocally determined
locally.
... Expanded slightly if necessary to make it clear.
Richard: If the last step isn't a call to a pipeline that doesn't have
explicit outputs.
Henry: I don't think that stating that carefully will take more than two
or three sentences.
Richard: I'm not sure that this will turn out to be the case.
Alex: Yeah, I'm not sure it can be done locally.
Henry: My proposal is fairly radical: maybe it'll be confusing but, I
would say: you have to have explicit not-calling-other-pipeline steps in
every place where you have to look.
Richard: It mustn't be a pipeline.
Henry: Yes. That's the minimum to declare victory.
Alex: I'm confused. Every step has a declaration...
... Think about a processor that's building step declarations. You'd have
to flag the ones that come from pipelines.
Richard: But you haven't determined the declaration of another pipeline
Alex: In this case, yes, but ...
<scribe> ACTION: Henry to craft the prose to cover this case. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action04[11]]
Comment 1: An unfulfilled requirement maybe? (p:exec)
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/lastcall/comments#001
Norm: In principle, do we want to do this?
Richard: This is something who's effect is completel system dependent.
Norm: Yes.
<Zakim> ht, you wanted to talk about / conversion
Henry: I think there are two or three details here, but I'm happy to wait
until we have a draft.
... What about serialization?
... What about the working directory?
... We need to do / conversion in file paths
<scribe> ACTION: Norm and Alex to craft a proposal. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action05[13]]
<richard> this is an optional step, right?
<Norm> yes
Comment 6: Bindings for pipeline inputs
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/lastcall/comments#006
Norm summarizes the thread.
Henry: I think the defaulting semantics is a little tricky to specify
clearly. But I do absolutely want to have pipelines with fixed inputs.
Richard: That's quite different from defaulting input then you don't need
any syntax at all. You just make the first step read from a constant
source.
Henry: That inclines me even further towards the position that this is
more confusion that it's worth. We don't have any use cases for it.
... I'm particuarly unhappy with Norm's answer to Richard's question about
how it works when you call a named pipeline.
Norm isn't sure if he was clear
Alex: I can see this going either way.
... Do we say what happens in the pipeline case. You can have a step that
has an unbound input. But pipelines can have bindings that go with them.
When you use a named pipeline, it can use that binding.
Richard: If you put a call to a pipeline in, and you don't ...
Norm: Maybe it's too confusing.
Richard: The only trace where this even arises is in the place where it
says that pipeline inputs can be defaulted.
Norm: I suggest we take this one to email and leave it for a week.
Henry: I encourage Alex to write up what he saw as the use for that.
Alex: Now that I think about it some more, I don't think we need this at
all.
Comment 23: p:add-xml-base with relative=true
-> http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/09/lastcall/comments#023
Norm: Do you change an absolute xml:base to relative?
Anyone think we should change xml:base attributes?
No.
Some discussion of whether or not a step with an xml:base attribute can
have a different base URI.
Alex: I think this step should make this explicit.
<scribe> ACTION: Henry to attempt to improve the prose for p:add-xml-base
[recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action06[16]]
Any other business?
Adjourned.
Summary of Action Items
[NEW] ACTION: Alex to review before the face-to-face. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action01[17]]
[NEW] ACTION: Henry to attempt to improve the prose for p:add-xml-base
[recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action06[18]]
[NEW] ACTION: Henry to craft the prose to cover this case. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action04[19]]
[NEW] ACTION: Henry to reply to the commenter. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action03[20]]
[NEW] ACTION: Norm and Alex to craft a proposal. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action05[21]]
[NEW] ACTION: Norm to arrange for the tests on tests.xproc.org to be in
Subversion so that anyone can update them. [recorded in
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action02[22]]
[End of minutes]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] http://www.w3.org/
[2] http://www.w3.org/XML/XProc/2007/10/04-agenda
[3] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-irc
[6] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action01
[7] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action02
[9] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action03
[11] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action04
[13] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action05
[16] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action06
[17] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action01
[18] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action06
[19] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action04
[20] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action03
[21] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action05
[22] http://www.w3.org/2007/10/04-xproc-minutes.html#action02
[23] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/scribe/scribedoc.htm
[24] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2002/scribe/
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$Date: 2007/10/04 16:15:01 $
Received on Thursday, 4 October 2007 16:16:25 UTC