Introduction

Although I have been aware of the W3C's XML Pipeline Language (XProc) for sometime now, I have only recently been able to experiment with it, and I must say I rather like it. I've been using Norman Walsh's XProc implementation XML Calabash. But, like so many things, you only really get to understand something if you make one yourself. Although, saying that, I don't think that logic extends to people; after all look what happened to poor old professor Frankenstein!

Anyway, of late my opportunities for XSLT work have been few and far between, so I decided I'd have a go at implementing an XProc processor purely in XSLT 2.0. Now it won't escape anyone familiar with XProc that you can't implement all of the XProc instructions purely in XSLT - hence the name of the project is 'Half-pipe', because it's only a partial implementation!

I have so far done some proof-of-concept work around the p:insert, p:delete, p:add-attribute and p:identity steps and I'm rapidly moving towards an initial Alpha release once I've got the XProc Test Suite feeding-in to the project. As for now you can follow my random thoughts on Twitter.