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"Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

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Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#61

Post by ndriscoll »

lucb1e wrote: post #52
ndriscoll wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS likely isn't the only thing that uses it. XSLT is basically the client side declarative template language for XML/HTML that people always complain doesn't exist (e.g. letting you create your own tags or do includes with no server or build steps).

I understand that there are more possible uses for the tool, but RSS is the only one I saw someone mention. Are there more examples? It may be that I don't notice when I use it, if the page just translates itself into XHTML and I would never know until opening the developer tools (which I do often, fwiw: so many web forms are broken that I have a habit of opening F12, so I always still have my form entries in the net…

It's by far the easiest way to do templated pages. I use it for my personal stuff (e.g. photo albums I share with my mom), but I can't imagine Google cares about the non-commercial web.

I think I've read some governments still use it, which would make sense since they usually don't have a super high budget for tons of developers, so they have to stick to the easy way to do things.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#63

Post by troupo »

lucb1e wrote: post #32

I had no idea what XSLT even was until today. Reading the submission, the thread linked by u/troupo below, and Wikipedia, I find that it's apparently used in RSS parsing by browsers, because RSS is XML and then XSLT is "originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents" so it can turn the XML feed into an HTML page I agree RSS parsing is nice to have built into browsers. (Just like FTP suppo…

> I also don't really understand the complaint from the Chrome people that are proposing it: "it's too complex, high-profile bugs, here's a polyfill you can use".

Especially considering the amount of complex standards they have qualms about from WebUSB to 20+ web components standards

> On the other hand, I don't normally view RSS feeds manually.

Chrome metrics famously underrepresent corporate installation. There could be quite a few corporate applications using XSLT as it was all the rage 15-20 years ago.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#64

Post by diggan »

troupo wrote: post #31
Y_Y wrote: post #19

> @whatwg whatwg locked as too heated and limited conversation to collaborators Too heated? Looked pretty civil and reasonable to me. Would it be ridiculous to suggest that the tolerance for heat might depend on how commenters are aligned with respect to a particular vendor?

There was a discussion they opened to "gather community feedback" just three weeks ago. That one did get heated: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523 Google ignored everything, pushed on with the removal, and now pre-emptively closed this discussion, too

> Google ignored everything, pushed on with the removal, and now pre-emptively closed this discussion, too

To be fair to Google, they've consistently steam-rolled the standards processes like that for as long as I can remember, so it really isn't new.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#65

Post by jahnu »

coldpie wrote: post #26

I 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 throug…

I implemented the full XPath and XSLT language with debugging capabilities for a company I used to work for some 25ish years ago. It was fun (until XPath and XSLT 2. Well that was fun too but because of nice work colleague not the language) but I always did wonder how this took off and Lisp didn’t.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#66

Post by delfinom »

webstrand wrote: post #9
troupo wrote: post #2

Despite rather heated discussion just three weeks they started just two weeks prior https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523

Looks like they're going to ram it through anyway, no matter the existing users. There's got to be a better way to deal with spam than just locking the thread to anyone with relevant information.

WHATWG literally forced W3C to sign a deal and obey their standards. WHATWG is basically Google + Apple + Microsoft directly writing the browser standards. Fixing Microsoft's original mistake of Internet Explorer of not creating a faux committee lol.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#67

Post by sunaookami »

Y_Y wrote: post #19

> @whatwg whatwg locked as too heated and limited conversation to collaborators Too heated? Looked pretty civil and reasonable to me. Would it be ridiculous to suggest that the tolerance for heat might depend on how commenters are aligned with respect to a particular vendor?

"too heated" is a codeword for "we don't want to deal with dissenting opinions". Same on other forums, e.g. Reddit.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#68

Post by codedokode »

This is actually not a bad idea. Why should the browser contain a specific template engine, like XSLT, and not Jinja for example? Also it can be reimplemented using JS or WASM.

The browsers today are too bloated and it is difficult to create a new browser engine. I wish there were simpler standards for "minimal browser", for example, supporting only basic HTML tags, basic layout rules, WASM and Java bytecode.

Many things, like WebAudio or Canvas, could be immplemented using WASM modules, which as a side effect, would prevent their use for fingerprinting.

Re: "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"

#70

Post by troupo »

rafram wrote: post #54
bayindirh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean yeah, I too would probably prefer to read a few well-reasoned arguments over email than to wade through hundreds of hateful, vitriolic, accusatory comments from randos in a GitHub thread. Being an open-source maintainer is hard.

Or, you know, do the right thing from the start considering that forced telemetry you have to opt-out of is universally reviled and every project that includes it suffers from literally the same issues.
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