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   ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 01:55:56 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

   "Google hates XML" me too
   "keep XSLT alive" Absolutely the fuck not. Have you written XSLT. I have and I wish to never encounter it again in any context

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 01:59:04 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     people get reactionary about the worst fucking technologies alive if it means sticking a middle finger up Google's ass, huh

     next time you'll see people bandying around saving Tcl because Google uses Python in their ASIC flows or something

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Thomas Fach-Pedersen (madmoose@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:02:39 JST Thomas Fach-Pedersen

     in reply to

     @whitequark I once wrote a website that used Microsoft JScript to generate XML which was then “styled” and transformed to XHTML using XSLT. By the technology stack you can probably estimate the era. I say let it die.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:08:49 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     if, when faced with an event, your response to it is to go "I'm sure somebody's affected! Let me go find who it is by piping the results from an `inurl:.xml` search directly into a discussion" this is a reactionary impulse and should be examined as such

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     Ted Mielczarek (tedmielczarek@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:14:55 JST Ted Mielczarek

     in reply to

     @whitequark XHTML and everything related to it are relics from a dark time in the web standards space and should be treated as nothing more than historical curiosities.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:23:51 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • ARGVMI~1.PIF

     @argv_minus_one according to https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-xslt you only need add one line to your existing XML rather than serving a mostly-blank HTML page; am I misunderstanding?

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     ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:23:52 JST ARGVMI~1.PIF

     in reply to

     @whitequark

     My only complaint here is that they're not replacing it with some generic way for the server to specify a client-side (WebAssembly?) program to transform an arbitrary response body into HTML, like you could do until now with XML and XSLT.

     That'd be a hell of a lot cleaner and more elegant than sending a mostly-blank HTML page with a script that separately fetches and transforms the actual content.

     And it would be easier on the server than server-side rendering.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:28:54 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • AssertionError("Joe Groff")

     @joe upsetting

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     AssertionError("Joe Groff") (joe@f.duriansoftware.com)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:28:55 JST AssertionError("Joe Groff")

     in reply to

     @whitequark two great tastes that go great together. XSLTcl

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:32:03 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • ARGVMI~1.PIF

     @argv_minus_one I'm unconvinced any of this is a problem

   • Embed this notice
     ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:32:04 JST ARGVMI~1.PIF

     in reply to

     @whitequark

     That's problematic. Anything other than a browser that needs to read the XML is going to be confused by the presence of an HTML script element.

     I don't even want to know what would happen if you tried this trick with an RSS feed or XML sitemap. Google itself would probably reject it as invalid.

     I'd much rather they replace it with an HTTP response header that nominates a WebAssembly preprocessor program.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:35:06 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • ARGVMI~1.PIF

     @argv_minus_one I do think the relative lack of integration WebAssembly has with Web is a wasted opportunity, actually, yeah

   • Embed this notice
     ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:35:07 JST ARGVMI~1.PIF

     in reply to

     @whitequark

     I'd call it a wasted opportunity. But 🤷♂️

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:37:03 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • ARGVMI~1.PIF

     @argv_minus_one I think Wasm GC has to land for that first, but yeah that's actually the plan I'm fairly sure. WebIDL<>Wasm bridge people tried to build and it was impractical at the time afaik

   • Embed this notice
     ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 02:37:04 JST ARGVMI~1.PIF

     in reply to

     @whitequark

     Yeah, that too. WebAssembly shouldn't need JavaScript glue code to manipulate the DOM. JavaScript should be entirely optional.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 03:04:04 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     • John Ripley

     @jripley oww haha

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 04:17:09 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Jamie Gaskins

     @jamie Mozilla and Apple are on board with this

   • Embed this notice
     Jamie Gaskins (jamie@zomglol.wtf)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 04:17:10 JST Jamie Gaskins

     in reply to

     @whitequark Having never had to deal with XSLT (which sounds like a good thing, if I'm reading the internet correctly), the specific tech they're getting rid of doesn't seem like a big deal.

     The precedent it sets is, though. The ad company with the browser monopoly being able to unilaterally decide what tech is and is not part of the web is a bit concerning.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:14:56 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • lily ?️‍⚧️
     • Ted Mielczarek

     @tauon @tedmielczarek i was writing (and later, shipping) XHTML and XUL apps when you weren't even born. please do not tell me what this mentality is or is not

   • Embed this notice
     lily ?️‍⚧️ (tauon@possum.city)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:15:00 JST lily ?️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Ted Mielczarek

     @tedmielczarek@mastodon.social @whitequark@mastodon.social this is exactly the mentality that causes the web to be a hell platform that's impossible to develop for

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:21:38 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • lily ?️‍⚧️
     • Ted Mielczarek

     @tauon @tedmielczarek that's some bunch of words I haven't said that you imagine me saying so you can be more upse

   • Embed this notice
     lily ?️‍⚧️ (tauon@possum.city)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:21:39 JST lily ?️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Ted Mielczarek

     @whitequark@mastodon.social @tedmielczarek@mastodon.social if you prefer 7mb of js slop apps then sure, but calling preferring alternative technologies (that actually work mind you) toxic techbro legacy software just proves exactly what the web mindset is. you will not survive in this world

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     lily ?️‍⚧️ (tauon@possum.city)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:21:41 JST lily ?️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Ted Mielczarek

     @whitequark@mastodon.social @tedmielczarek@mastodon.social i don't think this actually means anything at all

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:22:06 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • lily ?️‍⚧️
     • Ted Mielczarek

     @tauon @tedmielczarek it means that I was there to use these technlogies enough to know that what replaced them is clearly better, while you cannot have anything but a revisionist view on it

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:51:04 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸

     @IngaLovinde I think restrictive, less-than-Turing-complete transformation and presentation DSLs are valuable and useful tools (my own career started with designing one of those, better!) but I also think that XSLT is a particularly poor implementation of the concept

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     Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 (ingalovinde@embracing.space)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:51:06 JST Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸

     in reply to

     @whitequark I have written xslt and I really liked it.
     I even based the entire template engine of my largest personal project ever (web boards software) on xslt.

     What I especially liked about it (that was 2010 though) was that it was all about _transforming_ data, and not just a general purpose language with general purpose constructions; so it kinda forces the developer into a different mindset where one has to think about how input maps on the output rather than (which is the case with other template engines) how to write a general purpose program producing the output, or how to put the data in the placeholders.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 18:58:45 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸

     @IngaLovinde here's the language spec, for posterity: https://evilmartians.github.io/liquor/language-spec.html