[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Are hyperlinks presentation or content?
Wayne Steele wrote: > Company A can use one set of GIs, and Company B can use a different set. They > can differ on the old element-vs-attribute question, and whether all lowercase > is better than CamelCase. Useful interchange of documents is only slightly > impaired, as each can use XSLT to translate to the "local standard" > representation. > > XSLT enables everyone to use the syntax they like. Yes, BUT: There is no question that the XSLT solution is a more promising basis for interoperability than a priori standardization of markup vocabulary. The residual problem with XSLT for translation to "local standard" is in its 'push' nature. XSLT transformations are premised on an intimate understanding of the source tree and are designed to render that source tree into multiple output forms--as understood from a source-tree-centered perspective. "Local standard" as properly understood is just that: locally understood. The understanding of a target locale from the viewpoint of a source to be transformed is a different local understanding. Unless we are to return to a priori agreements, the understanding of the target at the point of XSLT transformation will predictably differ from the truly local understanding at that target. This predictable misunderstanding is unfortunately fatal to the use of standard XSLT for the purpose that you so hopefully describe. If a source-centered transformation is to be the only one applied, then the uses of the transformed data are strictly limited to those perfectly understood at the time and place of transformation--that is, at the source. By a different route we reach the same impasse as with a priori standardization of vocabulary: nothing can be done with given data at the target which is not as understood at the source. Yet the purpose of distributing the processes--and necessarily of using an locally appropriate data form for each--is to harness particular autonomous expertise into a larger endeavor. That advantage is obviated if all that might be done with transformed target data is what is already perfectly understood at the source of that data before transformation. Local understandings of data properly arise from particular local uses--processes!--which operate against that data. This requires that a generic transformation utility must share those local understandings in order to render data accurately into that locally comprehensible form. As a practical matter, this requires a 'pull' process at the target side of the transformation, designed to render multiple possible sources into a given outcome. A significant advantage of that topology is that such a transformation, colocated with the processes to which it supplies data, may share their private understandings of their own data needs, not only for determining the exact form of data which it should render, but also for performing accurate sanity checks upon what is does produce. Respectfully, Walter Perry
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