W3C

Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 Requirements

W3C Working Draft 17 December 2003

This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xsl11-req-20031217
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl11-req
Previous version:
none
Editor:
Paul Grosso, Arbortext <paul@arbortext.com>

Abstract

The XSL 1.0 specification defines the features and syntax for the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), a language for expressing stylesheets. This document enumerates the collected requirements for a 1.1 version of XSL.

Status of this Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is a W3C Working Draft produced as a deliverable of the XSL Working Group according to its charter and part of the XML Activity process.

This document is a work in progress representing the current consensus of the W3C XSL Working Group. It is published for review by W3C members and other interested parties. Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C membership. Comments should be sent to xsl-editors@w3.org, which is an automatically archived public email list.

Patent disclosures relevant to this specification may be found on the XSL Working Group's patent disclosure page.

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
2 Requirements

Appendices

A References


1 Introduction

[XSL 1.0] defines the features and syntax for the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), a language for expressing stylesheets. It includes an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics. An XSL stylesheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing how an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary.

Since becoming a Recommendation on 15 October 2001, XSL 1.0 has enjoyed widespread support. However, the user community has expressed requirements that have encouraged various implementations to provide extensions to the language. These extensions--especially those implemented by more than one implementation--are clear candidates for standardization so as to maximize interoperability.

The XSL Working Group has surveyed and analyzed various existing extensions, user requirements, and features intentionally cut from XSL 1.0 due to lack of time. Using the results of this research, the Working Group is developing an XSL 1.1 version that incorporates current errata and includes a subset of relatively simple and upward compatible additions to XSL.

2 Requirements

Since there are already various non-interoperable extensions for many of these features, it is crucial that XSL 1.1 be developed in a timely manner. It is important that added XSL 1.1 features correspond to things that implementors have implemented or things that can be implemented in a reasonable time frame.

After research, requirements gathering, and discussions with vendors and within the working group, we developed the following set of potential requirements for added features to XSL 1.1:

  1. Change bars
  2. Index improvements, especially merging page numbers
  3. Conditional graphic scaling, e.g., "scale-down-to-fit"
  4. Table of contents windows (aka bookmarks)
  5. Table markers that allow dynamically determined text to be put into table headers or footers
  6. Support for a value of "only" for the page-position property
  7. Support for a page-number-citation-last formatting object (retrieving the last page number of a section or document)
  8. Support for "flowmaps" and other region/float extensions

The working group plans to develop detailed descriptions of each of these features and may decide to omit something from XSL 1.1 if it does not appear to be addressable within a reasonable time frame.

The working group is also maintaining a list of other potential requirements to XSL [Post-XSL 1.1] that have already been deemed to be beyond the scope of XSL 1.1.

Appendix

A References

XSL 1.0
World Wide Web Consortium. Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). World Wide Web Consortium, 2003. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xsl-20011015/ .)
Post-XSL 1.1
XSL FO SubGroup of the XSL Working Group. Post-XSL 1.1 Potential Requirements [member only]. (See http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/Group/2003/10/post-xsl11-rd [member only].)