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kenferry • today at 12:18 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

Seems rather absolutist. XSLT was an idea that sounded good, but in practice was quite awkward (like many xml technologies) and never got off the ground. Do we really need to hang every failed experiment around browser vendors' necks forever? I would prefer they work on things people care about.

From one of the issue trackers:

"While it's important to not break existing web content, it's also important to prevent security vulnerabilities. XSLT has been in maintenance mode in browsers and has been an ongoing source of security issues."


Replies

pmarreck • today at 12:51 AM

> and never got off the ground

LOL, what?? I used to work in shops, circa early 2000's, where 100% of the report-generation was driven by XSLT. I'm pretty sure it had massive corporate penetration at some point, especially when riding along with Microsoft's pervasive-at-the-time support of the standard. And I'm sure it's still got decent penetration out there.

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ProAm • today at 1:31 AM

> Do we really need to hang every failed experiment around browser vendors' necks forever?

<blink> has entered the chat </blink>

jauntywundrkind • today at 1:09 AM

I saw it get used a lot.

The "we tried, it failed" story would be a lot more interesting in its bland boring shitty conservative dismissal rejection if the browsers had ever tried to support it. XSLT shipped 1.0 in 1999 and the browsers afaik never once ever did any further work, never bothered on the 2.0 (2007, incredibly better), 3.0 (2017), or new 4.0 (upcoming). Devs had to deal with the pretty jank early version, which changed a lot for 2.0! Massively! For massive betterment.

It's so so cheap and easy to discard and downput. I recommend to those desiring the path of the engineer the builder to be more sensitive. To tune in to what is good, what aspects did work. Look for value. The people in this world need those instincts, to look and assess and collect. The story of why things maybe don't work is the contrapositive failure, the same post hoc ergo propter hoc, but for the failure case. It's wrong, or at least, it usually misses the realer stories. It's a bad analysis filter.

This refusal to ever see the maybe, better, possibly rejects your ability to see and tune for more. Progress on, stop rejecting. Get good. Find good. Look for the good. Bring out the good. Or if not, consider the perhaps. If nothing else, more neutrally: let not you tie your wagon every time to the current of what is! (Another world is possible.)

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