Poll: New (or old) name for p:declare-step

At this week’s XProc Next Community Group [1] meeting [2] in Aachen, 
Gioele Barabucci proposed some changes to p:pipeline [3] that would make 
it a bit more versatile and avoid or delay the switch to p:preclare-step 
proper that many pipeline authors have experienced as inevitable after 
some evolutionary “steps” of their pipelines.

There was quick consensus that the p:pipeline shortcut, contrary to what 
the WG assumed when they wrote the XProc 1.0 spec, has note been used 
very frequently, and that the existence of this shortcut made teaching 
XProc a bit harder than if it were not present at all.

So we agreed on removing p:pipeline in 3.0.

Some argued in favor of keeping both names as synonyms for 
p:declare-step, like xsl:stylesheet and xsl:transform in XSLT. The group 
could not agree on that, again for teachability reasons.

But some reasons were brought up why renaming p:declare-step could be 
beneficial. For example, when p:declare-step has no @type attribute, it 
declares a pipeline that cannot be used as a step in another pipeline, 
therefore p:declare-pipeline might be adequate. One argument against 
this was that if you want to turn a declared pipeline into a step by 
adding a type attribute, you shouldn’t need to rename the whole thing. 
Consequently, some suggested to have p:declare-pipeline and 
p:declare-step as synonyms. Others wanted to make it concise by renaming 
it p:step (or p:pipeline). Some replied that we had just removed 
declaration and usage ambiguity for p:input/p:with-input [4] and that we 
should explicitly state that we are declaring a step rather than using 
it. Still others weighed in that in case of p:input, p:output, and 
p:option, there is no 'declare-' in it, either, stating that there can 
be no confusion between a step’s declaration and a step’s invocation 
because a step is invoked by an element whose name is the declaration’s 
@type attribute anyway, rather than by a ficticious p:invoke-step or, 
gasp, p:with-step element.

In the end, there were good arguments for renaming it p:declare-pipeline 
and also good arguments for keeping p:declare-step, but the overall 
inclination seemed to be that we should know this element by just one 
name all the time.

Maybe the broader XProc community has some new proposals, arguments, 
thoughts on this? If you just want to support one of the existing 
proposals, you can participate in this doodle poll: 
http://doodle.com/poll/zicuz2tps5ax246f
Add your comments by replying to this message or by adding a comment to 
the poll and/or the Github issue [3].

Gerrit

[1] https://www.w3.org/community/xproc-next/
[2] https://github.com/xproc/Workshop-2017-09/wiki/Agenda-and-Minutes
[3] https://github.com/xproc/3.0-specification/issues/136
[4] https://github.com/xproc/3.0-specification/issues/106

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Received on Sunday, 17 September 2017 12:03:50 UTC