use XSLT2?

[tcatapano]

Is it possible that the project could use an XSLT 2 processor instead of libxslt? This would most likely be Saxon HE. Not sure about the licensing issues, however, let alone the technical ones. Saxon's licensing is described at:

http://www.saxonica.com/license/license.xml

The open source Saxon HE C and Java versions use the Mozilla Public License version 2.0.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

If we were to run the XSLT code on Wikimedia Labs, we'd be bound by "Do not use or install any software unless the software is licensed under an Open Source license."

We are not obliged to run the code there, but so far, we have assumed that we will. Can you give some more details as to what would be the differences to libxslt and possibly other alternatives? Also pinging @Klortho .

[tcatapano]

It's not a huge deal, but XSLT 2 offers a richer set of functions, including support for regular expressions which can make things easier for processing the content of the source, and XPATH 2 (a component of XSLT 2) has a richer capabilities for navigating the source tree.

libxslt does not support XSLT 2. Unfortunately, it's my understanding that Saxon is pretty much the only XSLT processor that does.

While I'd much prefer to use XSLT 2, we do seem to be OK so far with XSLT 1. I wouldn't advise re-architecting things solely for the added capability, but we may get to the point where something is just much better accomplished in XSLT 2. When we get there, I'll let you know.