Re: State of XProc: language and community

On Mar 6, 2011, at 1:00 AM, James Fuller wrote:
> many good thoughts in this post ... though I would make a few remarks
> 
> * expath is far from frozen and being actively developed/discussed
> (check out my latest article on EXPATH http-request element on
> developerworks) ... in fact most of the 'EX' style specs tend to after
> a certain point sink into the basic toolbox versus anything too
> revolutionary

I am SO HAPPY to hear this!  

I had gotten the impression of inactivity from the News page (most recent post is 9 jan 2010, over a year ago).  I had also gotten this impression from the EXPath Wiki, which is nearly empty.  Since the whole idea of a wiki is to lower the barrier of entry for everyone in order to generate content much faster, this seemed like a bad omen to me.  

Suggestion:
Perhaps we could focus on using the EXPath wiki for “rough draft”?  Content that reaches sufficient maturity could then be moved to the EXPath website…

> * the wikis/sites you mentioned are all maintained by Norm ... perhaps
> if you contact him with what you would like to contribute then he may
> or may not give you access

Well, in my original post I had a small aside regarding those sites.  (I made it smaller font size because it seemed interrupted the flow of the larger article at first.)  In this aside I mentioned that I tried contacting Norm a number of times, but I got no response.  

I tried.   More than once.  But Norm is one busy guy.  :-|


> I have been tinkering for some time on the idea of setting up an XProc
> user group ... or plan some face to face meeting as these tend to work
> well in unifying a community at the beginning.

If EXPath is very active, why not do this idea as part of that project?

> Let me take a poll ... if anyone is interested in an XProc meetup
> sometime soon say so ... at the moment my target dates/location for
> this would be for one (or more) of the following;
> 
> Late March, before/after XML Prague in Prague, Czech Republic
> 
> Early April - London, UK
> 
> Late April - San Francisco, US

God…I have never been to any of these places before.  One day, when I'm all grown up, I am going to visit *everywhere*…haha!

—Tony