[racket] xslt

Matthew Butterick wrote on 02/28/2015 11:19 PM:
>
> "Caught on with everyone else"? When I looked into SXML a couple years 
> ago, it seemed like it was already somewhere between dying and dead. [1]

No, SXML is alive and well.  One paragraph...  And I was speaking of 
when Scheme people went one way, and PLT core kept their own thing (was 
it originally from the DrScheme Help Desk, which was a sub-Mosaic 
browser?).  Although some Racket users have been using SXML despite 
that.  The ssax-sxml list is not really active anymore, but that doesn't 
reflect on SXML.  (The keeping-up-appearances-on-some-social-media-site 
metric works better for dotcoms.  That email list was not where SXML 
happens, anyway, and no IPO-lottery-entrant is trying to make that email 
list look active to woo other dotcommers.)  Oleg moved from Scheme to 
Haskell, so I don't think he'll be doing any more Scheme SXML work, but 
the SXML design and the tools, like the first-rate SSAX, are already 
written.  If you scour the last dozen years of Racket list email, you'll 
see hints of SXML gaining users because the X-expression universe wasn't 
up to users' needs.  There is also still some SXML evolution going on, 
such as with my tweaks to SXML, my template package 
"http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-html-template/", and a more recent 
package called "sxml-destructure" that I'm trying to get open-sourced.  
If you check PLaneT, you'll see that the SXML-related PLaneT packages 
had tens of thousands of downloads.  Since then, a core Racket person 
has gone to the trouble to package some of the SXML tools for the new 
Racket package system.

> But since I started using Racket, I've never been disappointed by 
> doing things the Racket Way

Who is defining "the Racket Way" in this case?  Wouldn't a good 
definition be "practices that the Racket user community values"? 
Inclusion of an API in the default Racket distribution doesn't mean 
that's the way that the Racket user community thinks things should be 
done; it just means that API is in the default distribution, at this 
time, for whatever reason.

As I said, the X-expressions are OK for most purposes, and I'm not 
discouraging their use, and I'm not trying to get SXML into the default 
distribution.  But I and some others think that the SXML universe is 
generally a bit better than the X-expression universe, and have found 
that using SXML with Racket is totally viable and believed worthwhile.  
So maybe people looking to do HTML and XML with Racket should know that.

I definitely wouldn't chase everyone away from SXML, and if I think 
there is any chasing-away from SXML in error, then I will pause season 3 
of "House of Cards" on a Saturday night, to un-chase-away people from SXML.

Neil V.