Well, I'm not pushing hard for Perl per se, but my point is that as requirements go, it's not a problem. Pretty much any system that has `make` has `perl`, too. Same can't be said for Saxon or Ant. (Yes, I realize that our processing chain already requires these things, and that it would not be a good idea to try to get rid of them.) My objection, BTW, is *not* with using XSLT instead of Perl. My objection, a minor one at that, is with performing the hack on the input PureODD rather than on the output DTD. But that objection is not a show-stopper, it's just a misgiving.
I'm not impugning PERL per se, although I don't love it myself; I'm just suggesting that we keep the number of requirements in the toolchain to a minimum. We _must_ have Java and Saxon and Ant; we don't have to have PERL just to do a string-replace. I really would like to get away from any dependence on CLI stuff in favour of Ant, so that we really could have a platform-neutral build process.