RE: section 14.1

> One 
> concern that I
> have that does still not seem to be addressed is the ability to reference
> nodes in the principal source document while processing a 
> node-set loaded using the document() function.

The conventional (XSLT 1.0) solution to this is to declare a global
variable:

<xsl:variable name="root" select="/"/>

which means that the principal source document can be referenced anywhere as
$root. This solution remains available in XSLT 2.0.

We have also been looking at the possibility of providing a function called
input() which provides access to the "input collection" (which may default
to being simply the principal source document, or may be a generalization of
this concept). The semantics of this still need a little work.

> 
> ps. it would also be great if there were some way to modify 
> variable values
> in process (such as within a for-each loop)... But I am sure 
> I am not the first person who has asked for that...
>
We're not intending to make this major change, which would turn the language
from a declarative language into a sequential, procedural one.

Thanks for the feedback,

Michael Kay
Software AG

Received on Tuesday, 2 April 2002 07:47:16 UTC