Despite rather heated discussion just three weeks they started just two weeks prior https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523
If it's a security issue, shouldn't the browsers just replace C++ code with the JS or WASM polyfill themselves?
"Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
21–30 of 559 posts
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#22Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#23So annoying, XSLT is very powerful but browsers let it languish at 1.0
XSLT 1.0 is still useful though, and absolutely shouldn't be removed.
Them: "community feedback" Also them:
This came about after the maintainer of libxml2 found giving free support to all these downstream projects (from billionaire and trillionaire companies) too much.
Instead of just funding him, they have the gall to say they don't have the money.
While this may be true in a micocosm of that project, the devs should look at the broader context and who they are actually working for.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s another “we listened the community and nobody told us no” moment. Like Go’s telemetry issue. Google is boneheaded and hostile to open web at this point, explicitly.
> It’s another “we listened the community and nobody told us no” moment. Like Go’s telemetry issue. Go changed their telemetry to opt-in based on community feedback, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that example.
No. The official statement from Brian was “I received a couple of personal e-mails from some credible people who stated that their data belonged to them, so we (I) decided to make it opt-in” (paraphrased).
I spent days in that thread. That uproar was “a bunch of noisy minority which doesn’t worth listening” for them.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#25Previously: Should we remove XSLT from the web platform? – 4 days ago (89 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44909599 XSLT – Native, zero-config build system for the Web – 27th June 2025 (328 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817
Also related, now flagged:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44949857
Google is killing the open web, today, 127 comments
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#26I have no opinion on this, just sharing my one-and-only XSLT story.
My first job in software was as a software test development intern at a ~500 employee non-profit, in about 2008 when I was about 19 or 20 years old. Writing software to test software. One of my tasks during the 2 years I worked there was to write documentation for their XML test data format. The test data was written in XML documents, then run through a test runner for validation. I somehow found out about XSLT and it seemed like the perfect solution. So I wrote up XML schemas for the XML test data, in XSD of course. The documentation lived in the schema, alongside the type definitions. Then I wrote an XSLT document, to take in those XML schemas and output HTML pages, which is also basically XML.
So in effect what I wrote was an XML program, which took XML as input, and outputted XML, all entirely in the browser at document-view time.
And it actually worked and I felt super proud of it. I definitely remember it worked in our official browser (Internet Explorer 7, natch). I recall testing it in my preferred browser, Firefox (version 3, check out that new AwesomeBar, baby), and I think I got it working there, too, with some effort.
I always wonder what happened with that XML nightmare I created. I wonder if anyone ever actually used it or maybe even maintained it for some time. I guess it most likely just got thrown away wholesale during an inevitable rewrite. But I still think fondly back on that XSLT "program" even today.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#27The idea of building something like PDF.js makes a lot of sense. I think the core crux of it though is the polyfill should be in the browser, not something that a site maintainer has to manually implement.
We absolulely shouldn't be just ripping out support.
If there is a polyfill I'm not sure making it in Javascript makes sense but web assembly could work.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#28I love how one company can do whatever they want. This is perfect.
How do you think we got into this mess in the first place? First it was Netscape, then Microsoft, now Google.
Yet, the web has been prospering for two decades in spite of the quasi-monopoly state of browsers. It's the living evidence that the dominant browser vendor doesn't has as much power as people imagine.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#29This proposal seems to be aimed at removing native support in favor of a WASM-based polyfill (like PDF.js, I guess) which seems reasonable? Google definitely throws its weight around too much w.r.t. to web standards, but this doesn't seem too bad. Web specifications are huge and complex so trying to size down a little bit while maintaining support for existing sites is okay IMO.
The polyfills suggested are for the servers to do the transforms, not the browser.
Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"
#30i thought that HTML spec is immutable.
The WHATWG HTML spec. is famously mutable. They literally call it a “living standard” and it separates them from the versioned W3C standard.