I'm glad I read it, because I never would have known about XProc otherwise, but a lot of his specific complaints are moot today. XProc apparently supports direc

I'm glad I read it, because I never would have known about XProc otherwise, but a lot of his specific complaints are moot today. XProc apparently supports directory listing out of the box and there is now a zip module for it. In any case you could extend these tools with your own code if you wanted to continue to use them, they all offer extension points (mostly in Java, sadly, but a directory listing is just a directory listing). His overall point is not moot but at the same time I'm not all that sympathetic. As you dig deeper and deeper into the XML ecosystem you learn that more and more of it is really only there so that there can be an XML answer for every problem. I doubt many people see the benefits of a comprehensive XML ecosystem (frankly, I doubt that the benefits are all that meaningful) but if you don't see the point then you're engaging in pointless masochism by trying to use it. That he solved his problems by going outside the XML ecosystem suggests that he doesn't really perceive the benefit of it, which makes the whole exercise a little circular. "I like sweets and I don't like vegetables, and I discovered that if I put sugar on my vegetables I like them better than if I don't." Yeah, that's what I'd expect you'd find.