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Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 15:51:28 +0100
Message-ID: <CA+kxMuQuK0qFLNxPrkEOFyS=_5qeb58Sbe0NjAVx+HN+-NV0BA@mail.gmail.com>
To: "O'Neil Delpratt" <oneil@saxonica.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC proposal: Provide support for XSLT 3.0, XPath 3.1,
 and XQuery 3.1
From: danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

Hi O'Neil,

On 3 October 2017 at 10:04, O'Neil Delpratt <oneil@saxonica.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are considering submitting an RFC along the following lines and welcom=
e your comments:
>
> Enhancing the existing XSLTProcessor is not an option: it has fallen too =
far behind for this to be viable.

That's probably true.

> Excelsior have a licensing scheme enabling the compiler to be used by ope=
n source
> projects (see: https://www.excelsiorjet.com/free <https://www.excelsiorje=
t.com/free>).

I don't have the multiple hours available now to fully read through
and comprehend all the license information, however there are some red
flags from my initial reading:

> Instead, we now offer free personal licenses for that Edition to all pros=
pects
> who opt in when evaluating Excelsior JET.
> ....
> Evaluate Excelsior JET and get a free Standard Edition license for your p=
ersonal use:
> ...
> If you do not wish to receive a free license, you may skip the registrati=
on and
> download Excelsior JET Evaluation Packages anonymously.

Having to register and opt in to obtain a license, seems like a problem.

> Caveat #1: The Excelsior JET Runtime cannot be used in embedded systems
> due to a licensing restriction.

That seems like a problem.

> Caveat #2: The Standard Edition is essentially an entry=E2=80=91level var=
iant of
> the product, which means that: It is not available for OS X.

That seems like a problem.

With regards to the more technical aspects of the proposal.

Can you say how much bigger including all of the relevant libraries
would make the PHP executable? Some people have already expressed
concern at how large the default PHP executable has become.

What I would suggest is, if you think the license issues can be
resolved, to apply for a PECL account at http://pecl.php.net/ and
start having people to start using the extension through there.

Having a quick look at the extension source code, I get the impression
that having more people use it could result in lots of small
refinements to the implementation that should be done before the
extension was ready to bring into PHP core.

cheers
Dan
Ack