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Hi,
I too expect that XSLT 1.0 will have a substantial shelf-life in cerrtain organizations doing the particular kinds of jobs it's good at.
One of the ironies of technological evolution is that even when we *intend* there to be a Darwinian weed-out, sometimes the opposite happens -- we get more variety and speciation -- just as sometimes when we hope/expect many alternatives to flourish, along comes something and dominates, and almost everyone switches to that. XML has seen both kinds of wrong guesses in its short history. For example, way back when, we thought there might be lots of different document formats, but it turns out that to the extent this is the case, the "bespoke" formats are fairly private, and in public one sees pretty much the same thing over and over (Docbook, TEI, OpenOffice XML, etc.). Yet on the other hand, the expectation that we'd have *a single* schema language was met by the proliferations of DTD, W3C Schema, RelaxNG and Schematron (not that there hasn't been any Darwinian weeding here), plus a smattering of ingenious more local solutions -- so the opposite has happened, and to be an expert on "schemas in/for XML" you have to be conversant with all these.
I think it's too early to say how it will shake out between XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, but in some important respects they are very different languages, and XSLT 1.0 doesn't show any signs of losing such credibility as it's won for itself. Did C++ make C obsolete? There are many jobs for which XSLT 1.0 is an excellent fit. While power users will welcome the chance to supplement it with 2.0 for certain kinds of applications, there may never be a need for wholesale migration in many places.
One of XSLT 1.0's greatest strengths, which it shares with only *some* of the rest of the XML family of specs (including all its cousins and hangers-on), is that for all its real quirkiness in some respects, it's relatively easy to learn (at least if you get off on the right track). This is an extremely important factor in any calculation of risks vs benefits in a technology investment. (Though you should trust my economic analysis about as well as you should trust my C or C++ -- i.e., not.) It's really too soon to know how XSLT 2.0 will hold up in this respect, or even whether it'll prove to be learnable at all, by many beyond a select few, with or without a foundation in 1.0. We can hope -- but I don't see any reason to disassemble any 1.0 solutions quite yet.
, At 12:15 PM 8/24/2005, Dennis wrote:
Re: [xsl] How to get UTC displayed on XSLT
Subject: Re: [xsl] How to get UTC displayed on XSLT From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:42:31 -0400 |
Hi,
I too expect that XSLT 1.0 will have a substantial shelf-life in cerrtain organizations doing the particular kinds of jobs it's good at.
One of the ironies of technological evolution is that even when we *intend* there to be a Darwinian weed-out, sometimes the opposite happens -- we get more variety and speciation -- just as sometimes when we hope/expect many alternatives to flourish, along comes something and dominates, and almost everyone switches to that. XML has seen both kinds of wrong guesses in its short history. For example, way back when, we thought there might be lots of different document formats, but it turns out that to the extent this is the case, the "bespoke" formats are fairly private, and in public one sees pretty much the same thing over and over (Docbook, TEI, OpenOffice XML, etc.). Yet on the other hand, the expectation that we'd have *a single* schema language was met by the proliferations of DTD, W3C Schema, RelaxNG and Schematron (not that there hasn't been any Darwinian weeding here), plus a smattering of ingenious more local solutions -- so the opposite has happened, and to be an expert on "schemas in/for XML" you have to be conversant with all these.
I think it's too early to say how it will shake out between XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, but in some important respects they are very different languages, and XSLT 1.0 doesn't show any signs of losing such credibility as it's won for itself. Did C++ make C obsolete? There are many jobs for which XSLT 1.0 is an excellent fit. While power users will welcome the chance to supplement it with 2.0 for certain kinds of applications, there may never be a need for wholesale migration in many places.
One of XSLT 1.0's greatest strengths, which it shares with only *some* of the rest of the XML family of specs (including all its cousins and hangers-on), is that for all its real quirkiness in some respects, it's relatively easy to learn (at least if you get off on the right track). This is an extremely important factor in any calculation of risks vs benefits in a technology investment. (Though you should trust my economic analysis about as well as you should trust my C or C++ -- i.e., not.) It's really too soon to know how XSLT 2.0 will hold up in this respect, or even whether it'll prove to be learnable at all, by many beyond a select few, with or without a foundation in 1.0. We can hope -- but I don't see any reason to disassemble any 1.0 solutions quite yet.
Cheers, Wendell
, At 12:15 PM 8/24/2005, Dennis wrote:
I am not certain that my organization will EVER move to XSLT 2.0. We work with the type of data XSLT 1.0 was designed for (documents) and have been using it for quite a while, quite successfully. XSLT 2.0 looks to us like it was designed to meet significantly different needs and for different people working with significantly different types of data.
While XSLT 2.0 may meet YOUR needs better than does XSLT 1.0, I do not think there is much benefit in it for me. And even if there were, this would certainly NOT be the time; not until it is final and widely supported.
====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================
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