Re: Coordination of script in XHTML, SVG, and XSLT 1.1 (aka RDDL as a delivery vehicle...)

I'm a lurker on this list, but I've been working fairly extensively with
scripting in most incarnations of XSLT and SVG, and would like to make a few
notes:

1) There are two basic modes of scripting. The first is essentially those
scripts which are run at the instantiation of a declarative entity (for
instance, during the instantiation of an XSLT document for purposes of
creating extension mechanisms). The second is a user agent dependent
scripting that may make use of the existing DOM but is essentially
procedural and not directly tied in with the instantiation. Thus in SVG you
have the two modes of scripts that modify the SVG while it is being
instantiated and that modify the SVG after it has been instantiated and is
available for user interaction.

2) Any scripting node should not be a part of the XML core standard. As I
see it, scripting is something of a last resort -- if there is no other way
to perform an action in a declarative mode within the XML Schema, then
scripting makes sense.

3) Scripting exists primarily to tie the declarative XML schema into the
Procedural DOM for a given schema. I would thus question whether the issue
isn't so much scripting from a mime-type standpoint as it is the fact that
there is currently no Schema to DOM XML implementation.

-- Kurt Cagle


----- Original Message -----
From: "Bjoern Hoehrmann" <derhoermi@gmx.net>
To: "Curt Arnold" <carnold@houston.rr.com>
Cc: <xsl-list@lists.mulberrytech.com>; <www-svg@w3.org>; <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: Coordination of script in XHTML, SVG, and XSLT 1.1 (aka RDDL as
a delivery vehicle...)


* Curt Arnold wrote:
>Maybe we could at least informally collect the requirements:
>
>1. Must be usable in XHTML, SVG and XSLT

It isn't IMO clear that xsl:script will make it into the recommandation,
see the petition at http://uche.ogbuji.net:8000/etc/no-xsl-script.xhtml
(which is currently unsignable, bcc to the page administrator).

Current implementations use a type attribute to identify the used
language. This attribute takes a valid MIME type. One major problem is,
that _there are no MIME types_ registered for common scripting
languages. I tried to change that and contacted several entities asking
for help. I had no success:

  ECMAScript => ECMA      => no reply
  JavaScript => Netscape  => no reply
  JScript    => Microsoft => no reply
  VBScript   => Microsoft => no reply

I raised this issue on some W3C mailing lists, Chris Lilley (W3C) agreed
that this is a problem and also mailed ECMA, but I assume he didn't get
any reply, too.

Finally, I emailed the Web Standards Project; they are not interestend
neither feel responsible to do anything about it.

With this in mind, the approach

>5. Behavior may be identified with a namespace URI

of defining namespace URIs won't be successful. Further, this isn't
sufficient. The Web requires MIME types for HTTP transactions; with
respect to intelligent content negotiation the named entities still have
to follow RFC 2048 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2048.txt) and register
MIME types for the named scripting languages.
--
Björn Höhrmann ^ mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de ^ http://www.bjoernsworld.de
am Badedeich 7 ° Telefon: +49(0)4667/981028 ° http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
25899 Dagebüll # PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 # http://learn.to/quote [!]e
        -- If something is worth writing it is worth keeping --

Received on Sunday, 4 March 2001 04:35:42 UTC