Re: XProc confuses me; recommendations for learning?

I'm starting to “grok” XProc, but there are plenty of things about it that I find decidedly un-intuitive. I've actually been meaning to write the list about this, but I've been occupied with Finals at school. 

Although I've read and re-read the spec (and Norm's online book), I find myself constantly running into stumbling blocks and looking up things I thought I had finally grasped. I would like to collaborate with anyone who feels similarly (or used to, but overcame the feeling) about improving XProc's usability going forward. 

One particularly frustrating point for me are some of the most un-helpful error messages when my pipeline encounters a “dynamic error” (runtime error).  I might get an error that tells me where to look if im lucky, but I usually don't. 

A small (but important) wishlist of improvements for future versions of XProc is here:

http://wiki.xproc.org/XProcVNext 

Please contribute to the page if you have any ideas!

…

That said, I remain captivated by the *concepts* of XProc. It fulfills a very real gap in the XML family of tools. Most of my complaints are about things that have the potential to improve in the future (via EXProc, XProc Engines, or future updates to the XProc spec itself). 

…

Back to Finals. I'll write more about this later. Best of luck in your pipelines!


—Tony

Sent from my iPod Touch



On Dec 16, 2010, at 2:56 PM, David Priest <docs@davidpriest.ca> wrote:

> I've googled and read blogs and checked out online books-in-progress, all for naught: I haven't grokked XProc very much at all yet.  I suspect there is a key understanding that eludes me, and that once I clue in, everything will crystallize.
> 
> In the meantime, could kind folks on this list point to the best resources for understanding and using XProc?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
>

Received on Thursday, 16 December 2010 21:29:29 UTC