[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Suggestions
Scott Deboy wrote: > > I'm new to XML (reading the spec and learning about DTDs etc.) and I was > hoping someone could point me in the right direction on an idea I have to > replace Word macros w/a 3-tier system using XML. > > Example: I want to build a letter macro using XML. > > The letter is mostly static text. An address is required, as well as a > couple of other fields. Also, the letter has a couple of optional > paragraphs that I need to prompt the user to answer. A better approach would be to represent the user provided information as an XML document which is then given to an XSL engine to add the static text. So your template/macro would be a combination of a DTD constraining user-provided information, and an XSL stylesheet that takes that information and produces the output. Here's a really simple example. Say you are writing thank you notes for an engagement party. For each person you have a document like: <Person wedding="yes"> <Name>John</Name> <Gift>vase</Gift> </Person> that indicates the person's name, what gift they gave and whether they are coming to the wedding. Here's a DTD: <!ELEMENT Person (Name,Gift)> <!ATTLIST wedding (yes|no) #REQUIRED> <!ELEMENT Name (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT Gift (#PCDATA)> You then have an XSL stylesheet with a template such as: <xsl:template match="Person"> <P>Dear <xsl:value-of select="Name"/>,</P> <P>Thank you so much for your <xsl:value-of select="Gift"/>.</P> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test='.[wedding="yes"]'> <P>Look forward to seeing you at the wedding.</P> </xsl:when> <xsl:choose> <P>James</P> </xsl:template> Is this the sort of thing you wanted to do? xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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