Re: New axes?

It's a fairly cosmetic change to get rid of a minor ugliness. People often forget the [1] qualifier when they only want the immediately following sibling, and the difference between preceding-sibling::*[predicate][1] and preceding-sibling::*[1][predicate] isn't intuitive. 

The problem of course is that you can never get rid of a danger point on a well-trodden road by providing a new shiny road; the very people who fall into the trap will be unaware of the new features.

Michael Kay
Saxonica

> On 2 Dec 2020, at 09:38, Norm Tovey-Walsh <norm@saxonica.com> wrote:
> 
> Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> writes:
>> How would anyone feel about adding new axes next::* and previous::* to
>> get the first following/preceding sibling?
>> 
>> Or next-sibling / previous-sibling if people prefer long names.
>> 
>> It would have to be that next::* means following-sibling::*[1]
> 
> Can next::* ever be different from (following-sibling::*)[1]?
> 
>> Another two candidates are following-sibling-or-self::* and
>> preceding-sibling-or-self::*, with hopefully obvious semantics.
> 
> What are the use cases for these?
> 
> To me, it feels like adding a new axis is a fairly heavyweight change.
> There are already quite a few axes and I think users sometimes struggle
> to understand them. I’m not saying we must not add new axes, but I’d
> like to be convinced that their utility justifies them.
> 
>                                        Be seeing you,
>                                          norm
> 
> --
> Norm Tovey-Walsh
> Saxonica