XSL history (was RE: [xsl] XSL Sites)

[Matt Gushee <mgushee at havenrock dot com>]

Wendell Piez writes:

 > I thought Matt's potted history was excellent, except for one detail ... I 
 > think it arguable that the split of XSLT from XSL proper was motivated 
 > primarily by the MS implementation. That was a big part of it, but as you 
 > remember MS's was not the only implementation of early drafts. (There was 
 > also XT and one or two others in Java, plus that interesting package 
 > InDelv, etc. etc.) The whole community was discovering how useful the 
 > transformation part was even without the FOs (targetting HTML). A number of 
 > early adopters were quite outspoken on this issue, on XSL-List, sometimes 
 > with lengthy arguments. Check out the list archive.

Good point. I was slightly aware of this, but wanted to keep it simple
(I think it's 'cuz I hate sounding too academic ... just a personal
thing).

 > (FWIW, much as we bang on Microsoft for their apparently predatory 
 > marketplace tactics, the history shows that technically, at least, XSL owes 
 > quite a bit to their investment.)
 > 
 > In any case, I think Matt's account might be tempered a wee bit (as you say 
 > on that side of the pond).

As in, toning down the 'big bad Microsoft' stuff? That was
tongue-in-cheek; although I'm no fan of MS, I'm happy to give them
credit for their excellent XML tools.

Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA

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