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Posted to j-users@xalan.apache.org by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> on 2022/02/02 17:07:37 UTC
Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Or has everyone moved to other tools?
As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And Xerxes,
to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
I retired last year, which means I have some hours available. I have a
personal project under way right now, but after I get version 1.0 of that
published I could be persuaded to re-familiarize myself with the Xalan-J code
and do some cleanup and improvement on it. Some of the ideas we were playing
with internally were patented, but (a) I think IBM would grant approval to
Apache if we ask nicely, and (b) I think the one I'd want to use first may
have elapsed by now in any case.
Note that I'm not volunteering to tackle the current implementation of
Xalan-C. That was based on Xalan 1.0, which is a somewhat different
architecture, I wasn't involved in the translation, and C++ is not my strong
suit; I was able to keep Xalan-C limping along for a while, but I would
recommend rewriting it completely, preferably _after_ at least some of the
work on Xalan-J has been done. (A shift to a cursor-based data model API in
particular.) Also, I suspect that Xalan-C's code is horribly archaic at this
point; C++ was still trying to find it's feet at the time it was written.
Anyway, there it is: if there's significant demand, I can try to make myself
available; if there isn't, I'd rather put my effort into something that would
be more valuable to the community.
-
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Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de>.
On 04.02.22 15:42, Gary Gregory wrote:
Hi Gary,
> Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel.
That's true. I fully agree.
> How do
> you transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a PDF?
> With Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
The increased use of JSON etc. is just my observation and not my position.
I don't know what tools those people have in mind. My colleagues for
example suggested to use Thymeleaf to generate e-mails from raw data.
The previous solution was to generate XML, transform it via XSL/T to
HTML and an in-house markup format from which plain text is generated,
thus allowing rich and customizable e-mails. I am curious how far they
will get with their approach...
>
> 2c,
> Gary
>
Regards,
Klaus
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Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de>.
On 04.02.22 15:42, Gary Gregory wrote:
Hi Gary,
> Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel.
That's true. I fully agree.
> How do
> you transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a PDF?
> With Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
The increased use of JSON etc. is just my observation and not my position.
I don't know what tools those people have in mind. My colleagues for
example suggested to use Thymeleaf to generate e-mails from raw data.
The previous solution was to generate XML, transform it via XSL/T to
HTML and an in-house markup format from which plain text is generated,
thus allowing rich and customizable e-mails. I am curious how far they
will get with their approach...
>
> 2c,
> Gary
>
Regards,
Klaus
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
On 2/4/2022 9:42 AM, Gary Gregory wrote:
> Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel. How
> do you transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a
> PDF? With Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
>
I quite agree. I understand why folks wanted an easier-to-parse,
data-centered rather than document-centered, syntax. But the XML Data
Model could easily handle JSON, so they *could* have stayed within the
XML ecosystem and leveraged all our previous effort. The two should have
been co-evolving rather than in direct competition. Instead the JSON
folks were defensively dogmatic about "JSON isn't XML" and decided to
repeat the evolution from scratch. Which has done them no favors; last I
looked, they were still having trouble even agreeing upon a single path
syntax (and were still unwilling to accept that ours might address their
needs).
We *could* add JSON parser and generators to the XML space by defining a
standard mapping between the two notations. The one thing I can think of
that might be difficult is that JSON can express general graphs, not
just trees, so a naive mapping would have some risk of unintended
recursion. On the other hand, most JSON is a simple tree, and
programs/stylesheets written with an awareness of that risk can either
avoid provoking it or set a maximum-depth panic... It'd be a good 90/10
solution while we consider whether there's a cleaner way to handle it.
Not as robust as I'd like, but then again Parsed Entities present their
own risk and are not as robust against recursion as I'd like.
--
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Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
On 2/4/2022 9:42 AM, Gary Gregory wrote:
> Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel. How
> do you transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a
> PDF? With Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
>
I quite agree. I understand why folks wanted an easier-to-parse,
data-centered rather than document-centered, syntax. But the XML Data
Model could easily handle JSON, so they *could* have stayed within the
XML ecosystem and leveraged all our previous effort. The two should have
been co-evolving rather than in direct competition. Instead the JSON
folks were defensively dogmatic about "JSON isn't XML" and decided to
repeat the evolution from scratch. Which has done them no favors; last I
looked, they were still having trouble even agreeing upon a single path
syntax (and were still unwilling to accept that ours might address their
needs).
We *could* add JSON parser and generators to the XML space by defining a
standard mapping between the two notations. The one thing I can think of
that might be difficult is that JSON can express general graphs, not
just trees, so a naive mapping would have some risk of unintended
recursion. On the other hand, most JSON is a simple tree, and
programs/stylesheets written with an awareness of that risk can either
avoid provoking it or set a maximum-depth panic... It'd be a good 90/10
solution while we consider whether there's a cleaner way to handle it.
Not as robust as I'd like, but then again Parsed Entities present their
own risk and are not as robust against recursion as I'd like.
--
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Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel. How do you
transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a PDF? With
Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
2c,
Gary
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 9:07 AM Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de> wrote:
> On 02.02.22 18:07, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> > Or has everyone moved to other tools?
> >
> > As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> > Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM
> implementation.)
> >
> > [...]
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> just my personal view: Several years ago, we moved away from XSL/T 1.0
> to XSL/T 2.0, as it provided so much more functionality and allowed us
> to simplify our tasks. We are currently using the open source Saxon
> "Home Edition" as the processor. It is limited in its functionality,
> however, while the limitations do exist, they do not prevent anyone from
> taking advantage of the important features of XSLT/2+. So this is more
> than fair and the said shall not be regarded as any kind of negative
> critics on Michael Kay's business model. Nevertheless, to my knowledge,
> there is no open source Java implementation available that fully
> implements XSL/T 2.0 and later versions.
>
> On the other hand, one has to admit that XML and the related
> technologies are no longer everyone's darling. XML and the related
> technologies are nowadays regarded as verbose, cumbersome and no longer
> as modern or state-of-the-art. The next generation of developers
> probably might see these as dinosaurs like my generation saw the
> mainframes and COBOL. They are more and more replaced by other
> technologies (which are IMHO in no way better). For example, in a
> recently project, I could not convince my younger colleagues to use
> XSL/T for a specific task as we did in previous projects – a much
> simpler, but also much less powerful approach was chosen.
>
> That said, I believe there is surely a community that would appreciate
> your work, but that community will likely shrink over time (cannot say
> how fast, though).
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Klaus
>
>
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Say what you will about XML, JSON is just reinventing the wheel. How do you
transform a JSON document into another JSON document or into a PDF? With
Jolt? Good luck. XML and XSLT, XML Schema, and on.
2c,
Gary
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 9:07 AM Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de> wrote:
> On 02.02.22 18:07, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> > Or has everyone moved to other tools?
> >
> > As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> > Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM
> implementation.)
> >
> > [...]
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> just my personal view: Several years ago, we moved away from XSL/T 1.0
> to XSL/T 2.0, as it provided so much more functionality and allowed us
> to simplify our tasks. We are currently using the open source Saxon
> "Home Edition" as the processor. It is limited in its functionality,
> however, while the limitations do exist, they do not prevent anyone from
> taking advantage of the important features of XSLT/2+. So this is more
> than fair and the said shall not be regarded as any kind of negative
> critics on Michael Kay's business model. Nevertheless, to my knowledge,
> there is no open source Java implementation available that fully
> implements XSL/T 2.0 and later versions.
>
> On the other hand, one has to admit that XML and the related
> technologies are no longer everyone's darling. XML and the related
> technologies are nowadays regarded as verbose, cumbersome and no longer
> as modern or state-of-the-art. The next generation of developers
> probably might see these as dinosaurs like my generation saw the
> mainframes and COBOL. They are more and more replaced by other
> technologies (which are IMHO in no way better). For example, in a
> recently project, I could not convince my younger colleagues to use
> XSL/T for a specific task as we did in previous projects – a much
> simpler, but also much less powerful approach was chosen.
>
> That said, I believe there is surely a community that would appreciate
> your work, but that community will likely shrink over time (cannot say
> how fast, though).
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Klaus
>
>
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Julian Reschke <ju...@gmx.de>.
Am 07.02.2022 um 10:20 schrieb Klaus Malorny:
> On 04.02.22 16:41, Julian Reschke wrote:
>> Am 04.02.2022 um 15:06 schrieb Klaus Malorny:
>>
>> AFAIU, the limitations affect extensions specific to Saxon, not the base
>> language (XSLT 3 nowadays) itself.
>>
>> Best regards, Julian
>
> Hi Julian,
>
> it may be that I am not up-to-date -- please forgive me if I am wrong.
> XSL/T 2.0 has various functions that can make use of data types defined
> via XSL Schema. And this interaction with XML Schema, which is beyond
> the "basic level" of XSL/T, has been excluded from the "home edition". I
> regard these limitations as not very serious, at least for my duties
> they would have been nice in some situations, but I was still able to
> reach my goals without problems.
Right.
AFAIU, these are optional features - you can build a fully conforming
XSLT 2 engine without any kind of "schema awareness".
Best regards, Julian
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de>.
On 04.02.22 16:41, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Am 04.02.2022 um 15:06 schrieb Klaus Malorny:
>
> AFAIU, the limitations affect extensions specific to Saxon, not the base
> language (XSLT 3 nowadays) itself.
>
> Best regards, Julian
Hi Julian,
it may be that I am not up-to-date -- please forgive me if I am wrong.
XSL/T 2.0 has various functions that can make use of data types defined
via XSL Schema. And this interaction with XML Schema, which is beyond
the "basic level" of XSL/T, has been excluded from the "home edition". I
regard these limitations as not very serious, at least for my duties
they would have been nice in some situations, but I was still able to
reach my goals without problems.
Regards,
Klaus
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
Getting a new IBM donation may be a more of a challenge than I initially
thought thought... If I'm now recalling correctly, the Websphere XSLT2
processor was our third-generation code, a complete rewrite as a modern
optimizing compiler. That'd probably require a lot more review before the
company was willing to open-source it.
Can't hurt to ask, but I'm less hopeful.
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/\ | HTML mail is _evil_!
On Feb 6, 2022 1:33 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 10:40 PM Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>
> wrote:
> > and Scott was in the Research division; that might make it harder for him
> to get the attention of the right people. I can ping him and see if he's
> interested in raising the question...
>
> That shall be great.
>
> > Or we can try to find another channel to submit the request through. Is
> anyone currently employed by IBM still actively involved with an Apache
> project? If so, they might actually be the best folks to take this idea to
> manglement.
>
> Michael Glavassevich, works for IBM. He's on Apache XalanJ pmc, and is
> also Apache Xerces pmc chair. You might explore, if he could be
> reached to put this request to IBM.
>
> Many thanks, for your interest.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org>.
Hi Joe,
On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 10:40 PM Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> and Scott was in the Research division; that might make it harder for him to get the attention of the right people. I can ping him and see if he's interested in raising the question...
That shall be great.
> Or we can try to find another channel to submit the request through. Is anyone currently employed by IBM still actively involved with an Apache project? If so, they might actually be the best folks to take this idea to manglement.
Michael Glavassevich, works for IBM. He's on Apache XalanJ pmc, and is
also Apache Xerces pmc chair. You might explore, if he could be
reached to put this request to IBM.
Many thanks, for your interest.
--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
Is it possible that IBM could donate the 2.0 processor to Apache? Sure. And
that would be far better than reimplementing the quite major changes in that
version.
Is it likely? No idea. It would seem an entirely reasonable thing to do; it's
not as if the company is doing much about marketing it or using it to market
Websphere, and I don't know if it is being actively maintained.
But I'm not sure anyone in IBM still cares enough to care about donating this
code to Apache either as a good or bad idea.
I was forced to retire last year, so I'm not in a great position to advocate
for the company to make that contribution. Last I checked, the xslt processor
was still "owned" by the Websphere group, and Scott was in the Research
division; that might make it harder for him to get the attention of the right
people. I can ping him and see if he's interested in raising the question...
Or we can try to find another channel to submit the request through. Is anyone
currently employed by IBM still actively involved with an Apache project? If
so, they might actually be the best folks to take this idea to manglement.
\--
Sent from palmtop; apologies for any auto-incorrections.
() | Text Mail Campaign
/\ | HTML mail is _evil_!
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
On Feb 5, 2022 1:16 AM, Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
> with Websphere XML feature pack.
>
> I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
> somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
> (Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
>
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> > from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> > released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> > was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> > headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
> >
> > Hmm.
>
>
> \--
> Regards,
> Mukul Gandhi
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org>.
Hi Joe,
I think that, IBM's XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery engines were bundled
with Websphere XML feature pack.
I imagine, the above cited products are IBM's IP. Is it possible
somehow, IBM may donate its XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 engines to Apache
(Xalan)? That could be a huge boost to XSLT technology.
On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 2:50 AM Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
> from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
> released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
> was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
> headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
>
> Hmm.
--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Joe Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
I'd forgotten that Xalan was still 1.0; the IBM Research code derived
from the Xalan base moved to 2.0 quite some time ago. (I think that got
released as the Websphere XSLT/XQuery Compiler, or some such name, but
was never widely promoted; there were some ugly things happening with
headcount allocations at that time and we had other crises to handle.)
Hmm.
--
/_ My pronouns are he/him/his, though I answer
-/ _) to "(the) cat('s)" ... or anything, really.
/ Please correct me if I get yours wrong.
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/\ Stamp out HTML mail!
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Julian Reschke <ju...@gmx.de>.
Am 04.02.2022 um 15:06 schrieb Klaus Malorny:
> On 02.02.22 18:07, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
>> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>>
>> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
>> Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM
>> implementation.)
>>
>> [...]
>>
>
> Hi,
>
> just my personal view: Several years ago, we moved away from XSL/T 1.0
> to XSL/T 2.0, as it provided so much more functionality and allowed us
> to simplify our tasks. We are currently using the open source Saxon
> "Home Edition" as the processor. It is limited in its functionality,
> however, while the limitations do exist, they do not prevent anyone from
> taking advantage of the important features of XSLT/2+. So this is more
> than fair and the said shall not be regarded as any kind of negative
> critics on Michael Kay's business model. Nevertheless, to my knowledge,
> there is no open source Java implementation available that fully
> implements XSL/T 2.0 and later versions.
> ...
AFAIU, the limitations affect extensions specific to Saxon, not the base
language (XSLT 3 nowadays) itself.
Best regards, Julian
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de>.
On 02.02.22 18:07, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> [...]
>
Hi,
just my personal view: Several years ago, we moved away from XSL/T 1.0
to XSL/T 2.0, as it provided so much more functionality and allowed us
to simplify our tasks. We are currently using the open source Saxon
"Home Edition" as the processor. It is limited in its functionality,
however, while the limitations do exist, they do not prevent anyone from
taking advantage of the important features of XSLT/2+. So this is more
than fair and the said shall not be regarded as any kind of negative
critics on Michael Kay's business model. Nevertheless, to my knowledge,
there is no open source Java implementation available that fully
implements XSL/T 2.0 and later versions.
On the other hand, one has to admit that XML and the related
technologies are no longer everyone's darling. XML and the related
technologies are nowadays regarded as verbose, cumbersome and no longer
as modern or state-of-the-art. The next generation of developers
probably might see these as dinosaurs like my generation saw the
mainframes and COBOL. They are more and more replaced by other
technologies (which are IMHO in no way better). For example, in a
recently project, I could not convince my younger colleagues to use
XSL/T for a specific task as we did in previous projects – a much
simpler, but also much less powerful approach was chosen.
That said, I believe there is surely a community that would appreciate
your work, but that community will likely shrink over time (cannot say
how fast, though).
Hope that helps,
Klaus
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org>.
Hi Joseph,
There were few discussions in the past (the latest XalanJ dev
thought process, as per Gary), where Gary suggested that, we should
make a next XalanJ XSLT 1.0/XPath 1.0 release based on what is
currently pending on XalanJ jira. IMHO, if you want, you may look
through which XalanJ issues on Jira since 2.7.2 release need
work/finalization and have us commit those improvements to XalanJ
repos for next release.
I feel, another task you may .look is help XalanJ implement XSLT 3.0 &
XPath 3.1.
I had previously developed a fairly good skeleton of XPath 3.1 parser
(available at, https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/org.apache.xalan.xpath.v31/xpath_parser_dev.zip).
If you could, review this XPath 3.1 parser and identify what needs to
be done to complete it to be usable within an XSLT 3.0 processor (we
now need, an XPath 3.1 evaluator for this XPath parser). I'm ready to
complete implementation of its evaluator further, based on your
feedback, or if you wish you may pick up writing XPath 3.1 evaluator
for this XPath parser.
Another development path, to implement an XPath 3.1 processor for
XalanJ is extending an XPath 2.0 processor available at
https://github.com/xercesj/xpath20 (that's used by XercesJ).
Please advise us further, on these topics, if you're motivated to do
these activities.
On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 10:37 PM Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> I retired last year, which means I have some hours available. I have a personal project under way right now, but after I get version 1.0 of that published I could be persuaded to re-familiarize myself with the Xalan-J code and do some cleanup and improvement on it. Some of the ideas we were playing with internally were patented, but (a) I think IBM would grant approval to Apache if we ask nicely, and (b) I think the one I'd want to use first may have elapsed by now in any case.
>
> Note that I'm not volunteering to tackle the current implementation of Xalan-C. That was based on Xalan 1.0, which is a somewhat different architecture, I wasn't involved in the translation, and C++ is not my strong suit; I was able to keep Xalan-C limping along for a while, but I would recommend rewriting it completely, preferably _after_ at least some of the work on Xalan-J has been done. (A shift to a cursor-based data model API in particular.) Also, I suspect that Xalan-C's code is horribly archaic at this point; C++ was still trying to find it's feet at the time it was written.
>
> Anyway, there it is: if there's significant demand, I can try to make myself available; if there isn't, I'd rather put my effort into something that would be more valuable to the community.
--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi
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Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Klaus Malorny <Kl...@knipp.de>.
On 02.02.22 18:07, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> [...]
>
Hi,
just my personal view: Several years ago, we moved away from XSL/T 1.0
to XSL/T 2.0, as it provided so much more functionality and allowed us
to simplify our tasks. We are currently using the open source Saxon
"Home Edition" as the processor. It is limited in its functionality,
however, while the limitations do exist, they do not prevent anyone from
taking advantage of the important features of XSLT/2+. So this is more
than fair and the said shall not be regarded as any kind of negative
critics on Michael Kay's business model. Nevertheless, to my knowledge,
there is no open source Java implementation available that fully
implements XSL/T 2.0 and later versions.
On the other hand, one has to admit that XML and the related
technologies are no longer everyone's darling. XML and the related
technologies are nowadays regarded as verbose, cumbersome and no longer
as modern or state-of-the-art. The next generation of developers
probably might see these as dinosaurs like my generation saw the
mainframes and COBOL. They are more and more replaced by other
technologies (which are IMHO in no way better). For example, in a
recently project, I could not convince my younger colleagues to use
XSL/T for a specific task as we did in previous projects – a much
simpler, but also much less powerful approach was chosen.
That said, I believe there is surely a community that would appreciate
your work, but that community will likely shrink over time (cannot say
how fast, though).
Hope that helps,
Klaus
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@xalan.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@xalan.apache.org
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Hi Joseph,
There is no way to know really how much a project is used, we can only get
very coarse grained stats from places like Maven Central for Java
artifacts. It's just the nature of this type of software distribution.
From a user perspective, Saxon is light years ahead of Xalan-J. I did the
last Xalan-J release and it was a pain. No one is around to remember what
is in what branch. The tooling is outdated as is the Java version minimally
required.
XSL specifications are up to 3.0 and Xalan-J is still on 1.0 so there would
be a huge amount of work to do to move the project forward.
Another issue is that I do not think we know what Oracle has done since it
copied Xalan inside the JRE codebase.
Gary
On Wed, Feb 2, 2022, 12:07 Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> I retired last year, which means I have some hours available. I have a
> personal project under way right now, but after I get version 1.0 of that
> published I could be persuaded to re-familiarize myself with the Xalan-J
> code and do some cleanup and improvement on it. Some of the ideas we were
> playing with internally were patented, but (a) I think IBM would grant
> approval to Apache if we ask nicely, and (b) I think the one I'd want to
> use first may have elapsed by now in any case.
>
> Note that I'm not volunteering to tackle the current implementation of
> Xalan-C. That was based on Xalan 1.0, which is a somewhat different
> architecture, I wasn't involved in the translation, and C++ is not my
> strong suit; I was able to keep Xalan-C limping along for a while, but I
> would recommend rewriting it completely, preferably _after_ at least some
> of the work on Xalan-J has been done. (A shift to a cursor-based data model
> API in particular.) Also, I suspect that Xalan-C's code is horribly archaic
> at this point; C++ was still trying to find it's feet at the time it was
> written.
>
> Anyway, there it is: if there's significant demand, I can try to make
> myself available; if there isn't, I'd rather put my effort into something
> that would be more valuable to the community.
>
> -
> Sent from palmtop; apologies for any auto-incorrections.
> () | Text Mail Campaign
> /\ | Stamp out HTML mail
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Hi Joseph,
There is no way to know really how much a project is used, we can only get
very coarse grained stats from places like Maven Central for Java
artifacts. It's just the nature of this type of software distribution.
From a user perspective, Saxon is light years ahead of Xalan-J. I did the
last Xalan-J release and it was a pain. No one is around to remember what
is in what branch. The tooling is outdated as is the Java version minimally
required.
XSL specifications are up to 3.0 and Xalan-J is still on 1.0 so there would
be a huge amount of work to do to move the project forward.
Another issue is that I do not think we know what Oracle has done since it
copied Xalan inside the JRE codebase.
Gary
On Wed, Feb 2, 2022, 12:07 Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And
> Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> I retired last year, which means I have some hours available. I have a
> personal project under way right now, but after I get version 1.0 of that
> published I could be persuaded to re-familiarize myself with the Xalan-J
> code and do some cleanup and improvement on it. Some of the ideas we were
> playing with internally were patented, but (a) I think IBM would grant
> approval to Apache if we ask nicely, and (b) I think the one I'd want to
> use first may have elapsed by now in any case.
>
> Note that I'm not volunteering to tackle the current implementation of
> Xalan-C. That was based on Xalan 1.0, which is a somewhat different
> architecture, I wasn't involved in the translation, and C++ is not my
> strong suit; I was able to keep Xalan-C limping along for a while, but I
> would recommend rewriting it completely, preferably _after_ at least some
> of the work on Xalan-J has been done. (A shift to a cursor-based data model
> API in particular.) Also, I suspect that Xalan-C's code is horribly archaic
> at this point; C++ was still trying to find it's feet at the time it was
> written.
>
> Anyway, there it is: if there's significant demand, I can try to make
> myself available; if there isn't, I'd rather put my effort into something
> that would be more valuable to the community.
>
> -
> Sent from palmtop; apologies for any auto-incorrections.
> () | Text Mail Campaign
> /\ | Stamp out HTML mail
>
Re: Are folks still actively using Xalan-J?
Posted by Mukul Gandhi <mu...@apache.org>.
Hi Joseph,
There were few discussions in the past (the latest XalanJ dev
thought process, as per Gary), where Gary suggested that, we should
make a next XalanJ XSLT 1.0/XPath 1.0 release based on what is
currently pending on XalanJ jira. IMHO, if you want, you may look
through which XalanJ issues on Jira since 2.7.2 release need
work/finalization and have us commit those improvements to XalanJ
repos for next release.
I feel, another task you may .look is help XalanJ implement XSLT 3.0 &
XPath 3.1.
I had previously developed a fairly good skeleton of XPath 3.1 parser
(available at, https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/org.apache.xalan.xpath.v31/xpath_parser_dev.zip).
If you could, review this XPath 3.1 parser and identify what needs to
be done to complete it to be usable within an XSLT 3.0 processor (we
now need, an XPath 3.1 evaluator for this XPath parser). I'm ready to
complete implementation of its evaluator further, based on your
feedback, or if you wish you may pick up writing XPath 3.1 evaluator
for this XPath parser.
Another development path, to implement an XPath 3.1 processor for
XalanJ is extending an XPath 2.0 processor available at
https://github.com/xercesj/xpath20 (that's used by XercesJ).
Please advise us further, on these topics, if you're motivated to do
these activities.
On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 10:37 PM Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Or has everyone moved to other tools?
>
> As keshlam@watson.ibm.com, I was involved in Xalan's development. (And Xerxes, to a _much_ lesser extent; I wrote their first DOM implementation.)
>
> I retired last year, which means I have some hours available. I have a personal project under way right now, but after I get version 1.0 of that published I could be persuaded to re-familiarize myself with the Xalan-J code and do some cleanup and improvement on it. Some of the ideas we were playing with internally were patented, but (a) I think IBM would grant approval to Apache if we ask nicely, and (b) I think the one I'd want to use first may have elapsed by now in any case.
>
> Note that I'm not volunteering to tackle the current implementation of Xalan-C. That was based on Xalan 1.0, which is a somewhat different architecture, I wasn't involved in the translation, and C++ is not my strong suit; I was able to keep Xalan-C limping along for a while, but I would recommend rewriting it completely, preferably _after_ at least some of the work on Xalan-J has been done. (A shift to a cursor-based data model API in particular.) Also, I suspect that Xalan-C's code is horribly archaic at this point; C++ was still trying to find it's feet at the time it was written.
>
> Anyway, there it is: if there's significant demand, I can try to make myself available; if there isn't, I'd rather put my effort into something that would be more valuable to the community.
--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi