Re: Low hanging fruit for V.next [revised]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:
> Here's a revised list of possible low-hanging-fruit items based on our
> call today:
>
> * Define XProc in terms of XPath 2.0 data models (drop XPath 1.0 support)

I think this goes some way in simplifying spec as well

> * Attribute value templates

fairly easy to implement

> * Arbitrary data model fragments for parameters/options/variables

could we consider one simplification related to parameters … e.g.  if
we allow data model frags in options and variables couldn't we allow
an option or variable to contain a

<c:param-set>
    c:param*
</c:param-set>

or

<c:param/>

which means we could remove the notion of an parameter port (replace
with p:with-param) and simplify the language whilst retaining
everything we can do now.

> * Data types for options and parameters
> * Support for 'depends-on' (or some mechanism for asserting dependencies
>  that are not manifest in the data flow)
> * Syntactic shortcuts for p:input and/or p:pipe
> * Allow variables to be visible in nested pipelines
> * Some additional support for non-XML documents. Perhaps:
>    * The ability to load HTML5/JSON/etc. as XML
>    * An option on p:store to save decoded/binary data
> * Some mechanism for loading sets of documents at the p:document/p:data
>  level (e.g., <p:document href="/path/to/directory" include="*.xml"/>).
> * Simplify the task of passing "optional options" through a pipeline?
> * Explore using maps to simplify the parameters story
>
> Did I miss any that we discussed today?
>
> Can you think of any others?

* we touched upon it e.g. p:document and p:data could be merged

* thinking out loud, wonder if there is a way to merge the context
defined by elements p:xpath-context, p:viewport-source,
p:iteration-source

* assist making it easier to create cross platform pipelines e.g.
file.separator in file paths

thx for compiling these

J

>
>                                        Be seeing you,
>                                          norm
>
> --
> Norman Walsh
> Lead Engineer
> MarkLogic Corporation
> Phone: +1 413 624 6676
> www.marklogic.com

Received on Saturday, 28 January 2012 11:47:40 UTC