[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Questioning XSL

  • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
  • To: "XML Developers' List" <xml-dev@i...>
  • Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 13:31:55 -0500

Re: Questioning XSL
[I think that xml.com's forums are not quite working right yet]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> clarification please

Well, I should be careful here because the other camp is very amorphous.
But I will say that I have observed on many occasions someone coming into
the XSL mailing list saying: "I already do all of this junk in my favorite
programming language? Don't you people know that there is nothing to
invent here?" The first recorded example was an editorial by Dan Schafer
on "builder.com":

Typically they either never get around to becoming expert at XSL (as seems
to be the case with Michael Leventhal) or they change their minds once
they do (as with Mike Kay).

> But now we have all kinds of proposals proliferating at places
> like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), including such
> wrong-headed ideas as Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL).
> This concept, which tries to take the XML idea of data
> description into the realm of display description, creates
> situations where we have to somehow associate an XML file
> with an XSL file. The mechanism for this association is almost
> certainly going to be JavaScript. So why not just eliminate the
> middleware and have JavaScript talk directly to XML through
> the DOM to tell a document how to display its contents? Seems
> a lot simpler and more direct to me. 

http://www.builder.com/Authoring/Shafer/020298/index.html

I haven't yet seen anyone who seemed really knowledgable about XSL turn
around and say: "you know what, this isn't buying much, I'll go back to
Python/Perl/XYZ." There are various reasons to use XYZ over XSL but I'm
talking about *abandoning* XSL for XYZ.

There may be counter-examples and it would be interesting to hear about
them.

Abandoning a language you know well is not so rare. Most Python users are
refugees from other languages that seemed perfect for a while (Perl,
Scheme, Smalltalk) but got less perfect as they became expert at it.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Alabama's constitution is 100 years old, 300 pages long and has more than
600 amendments. Highlights include "Amendment 393: Amendment of Amendment
No.  351", "Validation of Laws Regulating Court Costs in Randolph County",
"Miscegenation laws", "Bingo Games in Russell County", "Suppression
of dueling".  - http://www.legislature.state.al.us/ALISHome.html

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...)


PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
 

Stylus Studio has published XML-DEV in RSS and ATOM formats, enabling users to easily subcribe to the list from their preferred news reader application.


Stylus Studio Sponsored Links are added links designed to provide related and additional information to the visitors of this website. they were not included by the author in the initial post. To view the content without the Sponsor Links please click here.

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.