shortcut attribute to define document properties

[rdeltour]

Can it be considered to add a properties attribute to document-loader elements and steps (p:inline, p:document, p:load) to set the document's properties as a shortcut of later invoking p:set-properties ?

[ndw]

The committee has mixed feelings about doing this now. If it turns out to be very common, then probably. Can you provide some explicit use cases?

[rdeltour]

I don't remember the specific use case I had in mind, but basically use cases would be exactly the same where you'd use p:set-properties, as it's only a shortcut proposal.
It seemed like a low-hanging fruit, but I understand you need to prioritize.

[ndw]

I think the sticking point is that the properties are naturally key/value pairs and having a shortcut attribute to set them would require having to microparse the attribute value. The current standing certainly isn't "no, we're not doing that"; it's more a case of finding out how common the case is whether it's really worth the effort.

[rdeltour]

Fair enough. But since properties are map(xs:string,xs:string), don't you have the same micro-parsing issue anyway with the shortcut syntax of the properties option on p:set-properties?

[ndw]

Oh, indeed. Brain cramp on my part. It would just be a map and we have a constructor syntax for maps. #facepalm

[rdeltour]

Haha. BTW, I'm not super familiar with XPath 3, but a quick glance shows maps are introduced in XPath 3.1, and neither 3.0 nor 3.1 are referenced from XProc 2.0. Should #30 be reopened?