Ideas for future XProc versions

Hello everyone!


There seems to be a consensus that XProc could use some syntactic sugar.  It could generally just be a little more human-friendly to read.  

I just whipped up a few examples of what I often wish was possible when I'm working with XProc.  

Feel free to throw comments, criticisms, rotten fruit and vegetables, and money…

…or maybe even throw some of your own example code!  :)


*****
<!-- 
    ALTERNATE SYNTAX FOR p:pipe (pipe() FUNCTION)  
================================================================= -->
<input port="source" href="pipe('step-name','port-name')" />
<!--    defaults to primary output    -->
<input port="source" href="pipe('step-name')" />


<!-- 
    ALTERNATE SYNTAX FOR p:empty (empty() FUNCTION) 
================================================================= -->
<input  port="source"   href="empty()" />
<!--    …or…    -->
<input  port="source"   empty="true"   />


<!--    
    GROUPING FOR IMPORTS
    (Code reuse good.  Overwhelming wall of text for imports bad.)
================================================================= --> 
<imports>
    <import href="…" />
    <import href="…" />
    <import href="…" />
</imports>
<!--    …or space-separated URI list…    -->
<import href="
    import1.xpl 
    import2.xpl 
    http://another/import.xpl" 
/>


<!--
    GROUPING FOR I/O PORTS 
================================================================= -->
<ports>
    <input  port="source"   href="…"        />
    <input  port="blah"     href="blah.xml" />
    <output port="result"                   />
    <output port="alt-result"               />
</ports>
*****


—Tony