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I don’t know. The author makes some arguments I could get entertain and get behind, but they also enumerate the immense complexity that they want web browsers t

I don’t know. The author makes some arguments I could get entertain and get behind, but they also enumerate the immense complexity that they want web browsers to support (incl. Gopher). Whether or not Google deprecating XSLT is a “political” decision (in authors words), I don’t know that I know for sure, but I can imagine running the Chrome project and steering for more simplicity.

PaulHoule 1y ago
The case for JPEG XL is much better than that for XSLT. On the other hand, people who program in C will always be a little terrified of XML and everything around it since the parsing code will be complex and vulnerable.
- _sr6i 1y ago
  Having a background in C/C++, that was the problem I ran into when I had to learn XSLT at translation company that used it to style documents across multiple formats. The upside of using XML was that you could store semantically rich info into the tags for the translators and designers. The downside, of course, with all the metadata, was that the files could be really large and the XSLT was usually specifically programmed for that particular document and very verbose so the XSLT template might only be used a couple times.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    XSLT is really strange in that it's not really what people think it is. It's really a pattern-matching and production rules system right out of the golden age of AI but people think it is just an overcomplicated Jinja2 or handlebars.
coldpie 1y ago
The drama around the XSLT stuff is ridiculous. It's a dead format that no one uses[1], no one will miss, no one wants to maintain, and that provides significant complexity and attack surface. It's unambiguously the right thing to do to remove it. No one who actually works in the web space disagrees. Yes, it's a problem that Chrome has too much market share, but XSLT's removal isn't a good demonstration of that. [1] Yes, I already know about your one European law example that you only found out exists because of this drama.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  >Yes, I already know about your one European law example What example is that?
  - coldpie 1y ago
    This page is styled via an XSLT transform: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/politicalparties/index_en.xml https://www.europarl.europa.eu/politicalparties/index_en.xml The drama mongers like to bring it up as an example of something that will be harmed by XSLT's removal, but it already has an HTML version, which is the one people actually use.
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  Another bit of ridiculousness is pinning the removal on Google. Removing XSLT was proposed by Mozilla and unanimously supported with no objections by the rest of the WHATWG. Go blame Mozilla if you want somebody to get mad at, or least blame all the browser vendors equally. This has nothing to do with Chrome’s market share.
  - troupo 1y ago
    Google are the ones immediately springing into action. They only started collecting feedback on which sites may break after they already pushed "Intention to remove" and prepared a PR to remove it from Chromium.
    - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
      > Google are the ones immediately springing into action. You say that like it's a bad thing. The proposal was already accepted. The most useful way to get feedback about which sites would break is to actually make a build without XSLT support and see what breaks.
  - basscomm 1y ago
    Shouldn't the users of the Web also get a say? There's been a lot of blowback on this decision, so this isn't as cut and dried as it's being made out to be
ablob 1y ago
"Steering for more simplicity" would be a political decision. Keeping it is also a political decision. Removing a feature that is used, while possibly making chrome more "simple", also forces all the users of that feature to react to it, lest their efforts are lost to incompatibility. There is no way this can not be a political decision, given that either way one side will have to cope with the downsides of whatever is (or isn't) done. PS: I don't know how much the feature is actually used, but my rationale should apply to any X where X is a feature considered to be pruned.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  No, the idea is that "political decision" is used in opposition to a decision based on rational tradeoffs. If there isn't enough usage of a feature to justify prioritizing engineering hours to it instead of other features, so it's removed, that's just a regular business-as-usual decision. Nothing "political" about it. It's straightforward cost-benefit. However, if the decision is based on factors beyond simple cost-benefit -- maintaining or removing a feature because it makes some influential group happy, because it's part of a larger strategic plan to help or harm something else, then we call that a political decision. That's how the term "political decision" in this kind of context is used, what it means.
  - troupo 1y ago
    > If there isn't enough usage of a feature to justify prioritizing engineering hours to it instead of other features, so it's removed, that's just a regular business-as-usual decision. Nothing "political" about it. It's straightforward cost-benefit. Then why is Google actively shoving multiple hardware APIs into the browser (against the objection of other vendors) if their usage is 10x less than that of XSLT? They have no trouble finding the resource to develop and maintain those
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      You have to keep developing new things to see what proves useful in the long-run. When you have something that's been around for a long time and still shows virtually no usage, it's fine to pull the plug. It's a kind of evolution. You can kill things that are proven to be unpopular, while building things and giving them the time to see if they become popular. That's what product feature iteration is.
ForHackernews 1y ago
The company that invented "Web Bluetooth" doesn't have a leg to stand on whining about "immense complexity" in having to maintain old stable features in their browser implementation.
zzo38computer 1y ago
If you really want to improve the simplicity, there are better ways to do so rather than excluding Gopher. (Also, they could make XSLT (and many other things that are built-in) into an extension instead, therefore making the core system more simpler.)
- joshuamorton 1y ago
  > (Also, they could make XSLT (and many other things that are built-in) into an extension instead, therefore making the core system more simpler.) This appears to be what they are doing, in fact!

PaulHoule 1y ago

The case for JPEG XL is much better than that for XSLT. On the other hand, people who program in C will always be a little terrified of XML and everything around it since the parsing code will be complex and vulnerable.

_sr6i 1y ago
Having a background in C/C++, that was the problem I ran into when I had to learn XSLT at translation company that used it to style documents across multiple formats. The upside of using XML was that you could store semantically rich info into the tags for the translators and designers. The downside, of course, with all the metadata, was that the files could be really large and the XSLT was usually specifically programmed for that particular document and very verbose so the XSLT template might only be used a couple times.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  XSLT is really strange in that it's not really what people think it is. It's really a pattern-matching and production rules system right out of the golden age of AI but people think it is just an overcomplicated Jinja2 or handlebars.

coldpie 1y ago

The drama around the XSLT stuff is ridiculous. It's a dead format that no one uses[1], no one will miss, no one wants to maintain, and that provides significant complexity and attack surface. It's unambiguously the right thing to do to remove it. No one who actually works in the web space disagrees. Yes, it's a problem that Chrome has too much market share, but XSLT's removal isn't a good demonstration of that. [1] Yes, I already know about your one European law example that you only found out exists because of this drama.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago
>Yes, I already know about your one European law example What example is that?
- coldpie 1y ago
  This page is styled via an XSLT transform: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/politicalparties/index_en.xml https://www.europarl.europa.eu/politicalparties/index_en.xml The drama mongers like to bring it up as an example of something that will be harmed by XSLT's removal, but it already has an HTML version, which is the one people actually use.
Analemma_ 1y ago
Another bit of ridiculousness is pinning the removal on Google. Removing XSLT was proposed by Mozilla and unanimously supported with no objections by the rest of the WHATWG. Go blame Mozilla if you want somebody to get mad at, or least blame all the browser vendors equally. This has nothing to do with Chrome’s market share.
- troupo 1y ago
  Google are the ones immediately springing into action. They only started collecting feedback on which sites may break after they already pushed "Intention to remove" and prepared a PR to remove it from Chromium.
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    > Google are the ones immediately springing into action. You say that like it's a bad thing. The proposal was already accepted. The most useful way to get feedback about which sites would break is to actually make a build without XSLT support and see what breaks.
- basscomm 1y ago
  Shouldn't the users of the Web also get a say? There's been a lot of blowback on this decision, so this isn't as cut and dried as it's being made out to be

ablob 1y ago

"Steering for more simplicity" would be a political decision. Keeping it is also a political decision. Removing a feature that is used, while possibly making chrome more "simple", also forces all the users of that feature to react to it, lest their efforts are lost to incompatibility. There is no way this can not be a political decision, given that either way one side will have to cope with the downsides of whatever is (or isn't) done. PS: I don't know how much the feature is actually used, but my rationale should apply to any X where X is a feature considered to be pruned.

crazygringo 1y ago
No, the idea is that "political decision" is used in opposition to a decision based on rational tradeoffs. If there isn't enough usage of a feature to justify prioritizing engineering hours to it instead of other features, so it's removed, that's just a regular business-as-usual decision. Nothing "political" about it. It's straightforward cost-benefit. However, if the decision is based on factors beyond simple cost-benefit -- maintaining or removing a feature because it makes some influential group happy, because it's part of a larger strategic plan to help or harm something else, then we call that a political decision. That's how the term "political decision" in this kind of context is used, what it means.
- troupo 1y ago
  > If there isn't enough usage of a feature to justify prioritizing engineering hours to it instead of other features, so it's removed, that's just a regular business-as-usual decision. Nothing "political" about it. It's straightforward cost-benefit. Then why is Google actively shoving multiple hardware APIs into the browser (against the objection of other vendors) if their usage is 10x less than that of XSLT? They have no trouble finding the resource to develop and maintain those
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    You have to keep developing new things to see what proves useful in the long-run. When you have something that's been around for a long time and still shows virtually no usage, it's fine to pull the plug. It's a kind of evolution. You can kill things that are proven to be unpopular, while building things and giving them the time to see if they become popular. That's what product feature iteration is.

ForHackernews 1y ago

The company that invented "Web Bluetooth" doesn't have a leg to stand on whining about "immense complexity" in having to maintain old stable features in their browser implementation.

zzo38computer 1y ago

If you really want to improve the simplicity, there are better ways to do so rather than excluding Gopher. (Also, they could make XSLT (and many other things that are built-in) into an extension instead, therefore making the core system more simpler.)

joshuamorton 1y ago
> (Also, they could make XSLT (and many other things that are built-in) into an extension instead, therefore making the core system more simpler.) This appears to be what they are doing, in fact!