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FW: [svg-developers] Re: SVG 1.0 is now a W3C Recommendation


[This was on the SVG list but this tangent moves towards the XSLT
topic... I couldn't find an answer to the first question in a search of
this list]

Chris Bayes wrote:

> I think that is a bit unfair. Microsoft was so early to adopt 
> xsl technology they developed and released it while it was still 
> at working draft stage. It was a very good version of the working 
> draft spec. Where they went wrong was not uncluding their xslt 
> version with ie5. But as they had jumped in at a very early stage 
> and shipped systems that included the wd version they had to support 
> it. They were also one of the first fully compliant xslt processors 
> around for quite a while (Saxon was the first and xt was never 
> fully implemented)

Yes MS did adopt XSL technology early, at least XSLT.  I'm not sure that
"...TR/WD-xsl" stuff really conformed to much of a spec though.  Was
there a particular draft that it conforms to?  I thought that came up on
the XSL list earlier and the consensus was that MS really didn't
implement a particular draft, they just did a quick and dirty partial
implementation.  Am I mistaken?

In any case it was great to see very quickly in *general* what
client-side transformation was like (not unlike Adobe's early
implementation of SVG): could have been a "technology preview" the way
they did MSXML later, though.  Better something than nothing, but I
don't know if it was good to do this inside a product, it sure confused
people.

One thing nice about the Adobe SVG Viewer is how it updates itself: if
the spec and/or the implementation isn't finished it is nice to get such
updates.

It was nice that Microsoft jumped on XML early, but they also had jumped
on Java pretty early, and there seemed at least to the paranoid quite a
possibility they would try to mold XML to their liking as they had
apparently attempted to do with Java.

Just in the pure number of hours Michael Kay has spent telling people
about the netcrucible site on the xsl list, an earlier adoption of
conformant XSLT would have been beneficial - he could have written a
couple books with that time. :-)  I'm not sure backwards compatibility
with that "working draft" version is a good thing.

Anyway, at this point I'm just glad they made conformance something of a
focus, and I hope they treat SVG in a similar fashion, all is well that
ends well!

(In a similar fashion Microsoft and/or Adobe could adopt XSLFO some
day...)

> Maybe microsoft are being cautious with svg and are waiting 
> for the final recommendation. Who knows?

Let's hope so.  Whatever they are waiting for, it is a fantastic
technology that will only increase in scope of use over time.  At some
point they will have to support it or work harmoniously with those that
do.


Max
http://www.siliconpublishing.org/svg.asp


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


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