RE: Which engine? (RE: JavaScript and XSL)

[Ben Robb <Ben at cscape dot com>]

Lee,

You are confusing the (non-conformant) MSXML released with IE5 (version 2)
with the latest MSXML (version 3). MSXML v3 is currently in final beta
stages, and has been pretty much compliant for the July and September
releases. The two are different enough that we class them as seperate
products.

MSXML did introduce some non-conformant tags (eg. <xsl:script>), but they
were removed before the first release (January) of MSXML3. I believe that
there are some extension tags, under the msxml namespace, but that is
allowed within the W3C spec, and occurs with XT and SAXON as well...

Going back to your original question - "which processor should I use in a
production environment?"... if you are most interested in conforming to the
spec, then MSXML3 and SAXON are the only two products which currently
conform. XT fell back (because James Clark was a little busy editing a
couple of the w3c specs *grin*, and as far as I know no one took up his
offer to finish it). There are some others on the market now (Unicorn, Xalan
etc), but I've not really played with those enough to make an informed
judgement.

Benchmarks are only just starting to come out, and it seems that MSXML3 has
the edge on speed. However, SAXON does have some very useful extension
functions, and there are some things you simply cannot do using standard
XSLT, so SAXON extensions become essential [though you are doing some fairly
arcane things by then, so the extensions are more "useful" as shortcuts for
difficult XSLT syntax].

None of the products are yet "supported" in the traditional sense; however,
with Mike Kay (SAXON), James Clark (XT, and editor of the w3c XSLT spec),
Andy Kimball and Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft) all regular contributors to this
list, it sometimes seems as if XSLT is the best supported language there
is...

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Pollington, Lee (ELSLON) [mailto:lee.pollington@biomednet.com]
Sent: 17 October 2000 10:38
To: 'xsl-list@mulberrytech.com'
Subject: RE: Which engine? (RE: JavaScript and XSL)


I may be wrong but I thought it also introduced it's own elements into the
XSL namespace - that's not very conformant is it?


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