3 ms·

TIL: Chrome supports XSLT. Good riddance I guess - it and most of the tech from the "XML era" was needlessly overcomplicated.

exasperaited 11mo ago
XSLT is really powerful and it is declarative, like CSS, but can both push and pull. It's a loss, if you ask me, to remove it from client-side, but it's one I worked through years ago. It's still really useful on the server side for document transformation.
- QuadrupleA 11mo ago
  Imagine a WASM XSLT interpreter wouldn't be to hard to compile?
  - afandian 11mo ago
    TFA mentions polyfills and libraries.
afandian 11mo ago
Perhaps, but isn't the contemporary tech stack orders of magnitude more complicated? Doesn't feel like a strong motivating argument.
cxr 11mo ago
Your response is like seeing the cops going to the wrong house to kick in your neighbors door, breaking their ornaments in their entry way, and then saying to yourself, "Good. I hate yellow, and would never have any of that tacky shit in my house." As your first sentence of your comment indicates, the fact that it's supported and there for people to use doesn't (and hasn't) result in you being forced to use it in your projects.
- QuadrupleA 11mo ago
  Yes but software, and especially browser, complexity has balooned enormously over the years. And while XSLT probably plays a tiny part in that, it's likely embedded in every Electron app that could do in 1MB what it takes 500 MB to do, makes it incrementally harder to build and maintain a competing browser, etc., etc. It's not zero cost. I do tend to support backwards compatibility over constant updates and breakage, and needless hoops to jump through as e.g. Apple often puts its developers through. But having grown up and worked in the overexuberant XML-for-everything, semantic-web 1000-page specification, OOP AbstractFactoryTemplateManagerFactory era, I'm glad to put some of that behind us. If that makes me some kind of gestappo, so be it.
  - lenkite 11mo ago
    Remove crappy JS APIs and other web-tech first before deprecating XSLT - which is a true-blue public standard. For folks who don't enable JS and XML data, XSLT is a life-saver.
    - WorldMaker 11mo ago
      If we're talking about removing things for security security, the ticking time bomb that is WebUSB seems top of the list to me of things that are dangerous, not actually standards (it is Chrome only), and yet a bunch of websites think it's a big, good reason to be Chrome-only.
    - shadowgovt 11mo ago
      But XSLT can be replicated with JavaScript and the reverse is, sadly, untrue. So if only one needed to go, it seems obvious which it should be.
  - cxr 11mo ago
    Point to the part of your comment that has any-fucking-thing to do with the topic at hand (i.e. engages with the actual substance of the comment that it's posted as a reply to). Your comment starts with "Yes but", as if it to present it as a rebuttal or rejoinder to something that was said, but then proceeds into total non-sequitur. It's an unrestrained attempt at a change of subject and makes for a not-very-hard-to-spot type of misdirection. Your neighbors' ugly yellow tchotchkes have in no way forced you—nor will they ever force you—to ornament your house with XSLT printouts.

exasperaited 11mo ago

XSLT is really powerful and it is declarative, like CSS, but can both push and pull. It's a loss, if you ask me, to remove it from client-side, but it's one I worked through years ago. It's still really useful on the server side for document transformation.

QuadrupleA 11mo ago
Imagine a WASM XSLT interpreter wouldn't be to hard to compile?
- afandian 11mo ago
  TFA mentions polyfills and libraries.

afandian 11mo ago

Perhaps, but isn't the contemporary tech stack orders of magnitude more complicated? Doesn't feel like a strong motivating argument.

cxr 11mo ago

Your response is like seeing the cops going to the wrong house to kick in your neighbors door, breaking their ornaments in their entry way, and then saying to yourself, "Good. I hate yellow, and would never have any of that tacky shit in my house." As your first sentence of your comment indicates, the fact that it's supported and there for people to use doesn't (and hasn't) result in you being forced to use it in your projects.

QuadrupleA 11mo ago
Yes but software, and especially browser, complexity has balooned enormously over the years. And while XSLT probably plays a tiny part in that, it's likely embedded in every Electron app that could do in 1MB what it takes 500 MB to do, makes it incrementally harder to build and maintain a competing browser, etc., etc. It's not zero cost. I do tend to support backwards compatibility over constant updates and breakage, and needless hoops to jump through as e.g. Apple often puts its developers through. But having grown up and worked in the overexuberant XML-for-everything, semantic-web 1000-page specification, OOP AbstractFactoryTemplateManagerFactory era, I'm glad to put some of that behind us. If that makes me some kind of gestappo, so be it.
- lenkite 11mo ago
  Remove crappy JS APIs and other web-tech first before deprecating XSLT - which is a true-blue public standard. For folks who don't enable JS and XML data, XSLT is a life-saver.
  - WorldMaker 11mo ago
    If we're talking about removing things for security security, the ticking time bomb that is WebUSB seems top of the list to me of things that are dangerous, not actually standards (it is Chrome only), and yet a bunch of websites think it's a big, good reason to be Chrome-only.
  - shadowgovt 11mo ago
    But XSLT can be replicated with JavaScript and the reverse is, sadly, untrue. So if only one needed to go, it seems obvious which it should be.
- cxr 11mo ago
  Point to the part of your comment that has any-fucking-thing to do with the topic at hand (i.e. engages with the actual substance of the comment that it's posted as a reply to). Your comment starts with "Yes but", as if it to present it as a rebuttal or rejoinder to something that was said, but then proceeds into total non-sequitur. It's an unrestrained attempt at a change of subject and makes for a not-very-hard-to-spot type of misdirection. Your neighbors' ugly yellow tchotchkes have in no way forced you—nor will they ever force you—to ornament your house with XSLT printouts.