- From: Mike Brown <mbrown@corp.webb.net>
- Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 13:08:51 -0700
- To: "'xsl-list@mulberrytech.com'" <xsl-list@mulberrytech.com>
- Cc: "'xsl-editors@w3.org'" <xsl-editors@w3.org>
On the XSL list, someone said: > There is no such thing as a "standalone" XSL page... Not really wrong, but not 100% true either, especially with the advent of the document() function. An XSLT engine only needs one source node to process: a root node. This root node is not something that is specified in an XML document (it's not the same as the root/document element). If there is only a root node, there is no reason to assume that there was an XML document or other data source from which the source tree was constructed, and in my opinion, it follows that there is no reason for an XSLT processor such as XT to require such a source document as one of its command-line arguments -- a source tree consisting of only a root node can be the default, if no other data source is provided. I mentioned this either on the XSL list or to James Clark directly (I don't remember which) but my comment was not acknowledged. I realize that the spec only deals with tree transformations and this is a peripheral implementation issue, but the spec does make recommendations for how a processor should handle output... so why not also make a recommendation like this for how it should handle input? Or am I missing something?
Received on Thursday, 13 January 2000 15:08:54 UTC