4/29/2002 10:46:19 PM, Elliotte Rusty Harold <> wrote:
>
>
>I could copy and paste the rest of the relevant specs, but you get
>the idea. There's a clear path from the character representation of
>the XML document to the source tree on which XSLT operates. There's
>no wiggle-room for performing other processes on the document before
>XSLT gets ahold of it.
I'm afraid that this is so MUCH wiggle room that the W3C held a
conference last year to solicit thoughts on how to deal with it.
http://www.w3.org/XML/2001/07/XMLPM.html
"Increasingly, software and specifications define processing of XML documents in terms
of XML-to-XML or infoset-to-infoset transformations. The XML Core Working Group is
developing the XInclude specification; the XML Linking WG has developed the XLink and
XBase specifications, which can be viewed as ways to enrich or annotate infosets; the
XML Schema 1.0 language defines validation and annotation with datatype and other
information in terms of a transformation from the input infoset to the output, post-
schema-validation infoset. The XML Query language will work on an abstract data model
defined in terms of the infoset, rather than in terms of the surface XML syntax.
Encryption and digital signatures must be managed at appropriate points in the
processing chain. The list could be extended indefinitely.
However, the relationship among all of these W3C specifications is unspecified -- in
particular the sequence in which the infoset-to-infoset transformations may or must be
performed.
There is also no specification, and currently no W3C work item, for specifying how an
author or application programmer could specify an order to the various transformations.
Thus it appears there is a missing specification in the XML activity."
As Leigh notes in http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/03/13/processing-model.html
"Unfortunately seven months later there's been little in the way of visible progress."
