& XSLT All,

After reading the responses to my most recent proposal, I agree that
my proposal was too specific to be generally useful, and in the
context of XSLT it is trivial.  I'm sorry for the noise, but I'm glad
for the feedback; thanks for keeping me humble.  I was focused on some
problems that I was having with (limitations within) XForms at the
time.

I think this may raise a more interesting and general question.  How
should the community deal with the needs of host languages (for XPath)
other than XSLT?  XPath was originally designed for use with XSLT, but
it has proven to be a (very) useful language for any application that
needs to ask questions of an XML document.  We're now seeing it in
other XML host languages like XForms as well as in XML libraries for a
broad range of general-purpose programming languages.  Even in these
non-XSLT contexts, I see a useful and sensible proliferation of EXSLT
extension functions, although clearly not the extension elements.  To
what degree is EXSLT really EXPath in spirit, and where do we draw the
line on how powerful we allow XPath to become through extensions?
Should we identify which, if any, extension functions are only
intended for use when the host language is XSLT?  Do we want to say
anything about when the host language is not XSLT?

Take care,

    John L. Clark
_______________________________________________
exslt mailing list
list@[...].org
http://www.exslt.org/list