[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Debug Support in XSL (WAS RE: XML Extensibility / XML Schemas)
At 00/08/25 09:41 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: >Do you or anyone else know if these WYSIWYG XSL >editors will be handling the complexities of >authoring and debugging the XSL transforms? Personally, I don't, which is why I'm anxious to see what Whitehill offers to see the way they support their claims. It is exciting to think these tools are on their way. I have seen "editing assistants" which walk you through the authoring process giving you a montage of what you're working with, what you've done in your stylesheet, and the results therefrom ... but I don't use them myself and I wouldn't necessarily call them WYSIWYG editors from my personal sense of what is needed. See eXcelon Corp's Stylus http://www.eXcelonCorp.com/products/excelon_stylus.html and IBM's http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/xsleditor for the only two examples I am aware of (though I haven't used either of them myself). I'm sure these tools are very useful for many people. I feel that an editing assistant works in the paradigm of the declarative language. Some may indeed have drag-and-drop interfaces and WYSIWYG panes on the canvas. But, I figure true WYSIWYG editing goes beyond editing assistance in that the paradigm presented to the user needs to be focused on the result objective and not on the declarative language used by the tool. .... which is the rub! There will *always* be the need to work with the declarative language, and any such tool that "hides" the declarative language *must* be able to accommodate it or accommodate the users who themselves need to work with the declarative language in concert with the application. Those of you familiar with my background with my former employer may be hearing this as an echo from me (please don't laugh!) and may understand why I hold a personal conviction that true unstructured graphical user interfaces to structured declarative languages are a tough nut to crack. Graphical editing of document models (DTDs) is the parallel I'm thinking of regarding graphical editing of stylesheets. I haven't seen a fully-enough-featured environment yet, myself, for either environment ... I hope that is just my naïveté. I've decided that the problem when you focus on the user who doesn't want to know or work with the underlying declarative language is that you don't (can't?) properly address the needs of the user who needs to know and work with the underlying declarative language. If a company can successfully address both, then they've cracked that nut! Which is why I think my training licensees and I will long have a market for XSLT language instructor-led training. :{)} >This >is where our folks are complaining loudest: the >debug environments. I'm sure! Note that editing assistants may be quite useful for debugging ... which more often, I think, needs the language paradigm rather than the result paradigm. I hope this helps. ........................ Ken -- G. Ken Holman mailto:gkholman@C... Crane Softwrights Ltd. http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/ Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0 +1(613)489-0999 (Fax:-0995) Web site: XSL/XML/DSSSL/SGML services, training, libraries, products. Book: Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath ISBN1-894049-05-5 Article: What is XSLT? http://www.xml.com/pub/2000/08/holman Next public instructor-led training: 2000-09-19/20,2000-10-03/05, - 2000-10-09/10,2000-10-19,2000-11-12,2000-12-03/04,2001-01-27
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