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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"

#161
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.

[deleted]

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

#162
post #141

So if in reading the two threads correctly essentially Google asked for feedback, essentially all the feedback said "no, please don't". And they said "thanks for the feedback, we're gonna do it any way!"? The other suggestions ignored seemed to be "if this is about security, then fund the OSS, project. Or swap to a newer safer library, or pull it into the JS sandbox and ensure support is maintained." Which were all m…

Web is for all practical purposes ChromeOS, but then people complain about Apple not playing ball.

> ChromeOS is for all practical purposes, the web.

Fixed that typo for you.

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

#163
post #53

I used XSLT once to publish recipes on the web. The cookbook software my mom used (maybe MasterCook?) could "export as xml" and I wrote an xslt to transform it into readable html. It was fine. It's, of course, also possible to run the XSLT from the command line to generate static html. The suggestion of using a polyfill is a bit nonsensical as I suspect there is little new web being written in XSLT, so someone would…

It would sure be possible to combine a polyfill with a webextension, not sure if XSLT contains any footguns for this approach that would make it hard to do, but if it's solely a single client-side transformation of the initial XML response, this should work fine.

Cool example with the recipes page :)

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

#164
post #154
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former Mozilla and Google (Chrome team specifically) dev here. The way I see what you're saying is: Representatives from Chrome/Blink, Safari/Webkit, and Firefox/Gecko are all supportive of removing XSLT from the web platform, regardless of whether it's still being used. It's okay because someone from Mozilla brought it up. Out of those three projects, two are notoriously under-resourced, and one is notorious for con…

When I see "reps from every browser agree" my bullshit alarm immediately goes off. Does it include unanimous support from browser projects that are either: 1. not trillion dollar tech companies or 2. not 99% funded from a trillion dollar tech company. I have long suspected that Google gives so much money to Mozilla both for the default search option, but also for massive indirect control to deliberately cripple Mozil…

It's not a huge conspiracy, but it is worthwhile to consider what the incentives are for people from each browser vendor. In practice all the vendors probably have big backlogs of work they are struggling to keep up with. The backlogs are accumulating in part because of the breakneck pace at which new APIs and features are added to the web platform, and in part because of the unending torrent of new security vulnerabilities being discovered in existing parts of the platform. Anything that reduces the backlog is thus really appealing, and money doesn't have to change hands.

Arguably, we could lighten the load on all three teams (especially the under-resourced Firefox and Safari teams) by slowing the pace of new APIs and platform features. This would also ease development of browsers by new teams, like Servo or Ladybird. But this seems to be an unpopular stance because people really (for good reason) want the web platform to have every pet feature they're an advocate for. Most people don't have the perspective necessary to see why a slower pace may be necessary.

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

#165
post #102

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 th…

I get the point a minimal browser and WASM, but Java bytecode ?! Why not Python bytecode ? Seems unreasonable to me to add any specific bytecode support. By layout rules you mean get rid of CSS ? Sounds also unreasonable IMHO. And no WebAudio and Canvas couldn't be implemented in client WASM without big security implication. If by module you mean inside the browser, them, what is the point of WASM here ?

Honestly, even WASM makes it not very minimal in my book. A minimal browser should be HTML and perhaps a subset of CSS, that's it.

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

#166

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 th…

Why should the browser contain a specific scripting language, like JavaScript, and not ActiveScript for example?

It's a consequence of javascript being "good enough." Originally, the goal was for the web to support multiple languages (I think one prototype of the tag had a "type=text/tcl") and IE supported VBScript for a while.

But at the end of the day, you only really need one, and the type attribute was phased out of the script tag entirely, and Javascript won.

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

#167

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 th…

Why should the browser contain a specific scripting language, like JavaScript, and not ActiveScript for example?

I suspect you might know this, but Internet Explorer 3 supported JavaScript (JScript) and VBScript in 1996.

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

#168
post #149
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably labeling a removal of a format (which is somewhat niche anyway) as "killing the open web" was a bit hyperbolic and not entirely warranted in this case. Imagine that tomorrow, Google announces plans to stop supporting HTML and move everyone to its own version of "CompuServe", delivered only via Google Fiber and accessible only with Google Chrome. What headline would you suggest for that occasion? " Google is…

No need, with exception of Safari, Web is ChromeOS already. All the other alternatives are meaningless, including Firefox. I am one of the few folks on my team that still uses Firefox, all our projects dropped support for it like 5 years ago.

Wow, you’re really pushing this Web=ChromeOS nonsense. Want to support that with something more than your own isolated anecdote?

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

#169
post #154
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former Mozilla and Google (Chrome team specifically) dev here. The way I see what you're saying is: Representatives from Chrome/Blink, Safari/Webkit, and Firefox/Gecko are all supportive of removing XSLT from the web platform, regardless of whether it's still being used. It's okay because someone from Mozilla brought it up. Out of those three projects, two are notoriously under-resourced, and one is notorious for con…

When I see "reps from every browser agree" my bullshit alarm immediately goes off. Does it include unanimous support from browser projects that are either: 1. not trillion dollar tech companies or 2. not 99% funded from a trillion dollar tech company. I have long suspected that Google gives so much money to Mozilla both for the default search option, but also for massive indirect control to deliberately cripple Mozil…

This makes the job of smaller engines like Servo and Ladybird a lot easier.

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

#170

A few things to note: - This isn't Chrome doing this unilaterally. https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523 shows that representatives from every browser are supportive and there have been discussions about this in standards meetings: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11146#issuecomment-275... - You can see from the WHATNOT meeting agenda that it was a Mozilla engineer who brought it up last time. - Opening a…

The implementations are owned by the implementers. Who owns the actual standard, the implementers or the users?
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