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Re: in which I surrender a 15-year-old argument(transforming t

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 18:01:30 -0400

Because people have asked -

No, this isn't an April Fools joke!

Thanks,
Simon

> Because, you know, times have changed.
>
> I'm not sure Ken Holman will celebrate, given that the transformation
> layer lately is mostly amalgams of JavaScript. It does seem like yes,
> though, transformation is rapidly becoming more important as the tasks
> people perform on the Web become more complex.
>
> <http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/04/transforming-the-web-through-transformation.html>
>
> "Fifteen years ago, arguing with people cheering on XSL transformations, I
> argued that decoration, CSS style, was enough. The virtues of its relative
> simplicity vastly overwhelmed the extra things XSLT made possible.
> Reordering the document tree might be a nice idea, but in 1999 the
> document tree was mostly made on the server in response to client
> requests.
>
> Even today, XSLT remains a steep climb for most web developers.
> Client-side XSLT never found widespread support (though Saxon-CE and
> Frameless are well worth exploring). XSLT remains alien to most web
> developers.
>
> Instead, we keep reinventing transformation with more familiar tools,
> often JavaScript tools. Few of these tools aim for the completeness or
> complexity of XSLT. Unfortunately, though, these tools are fragmented
> across many different communities (for frameworks) and people building
> their own versions.
>
> Stepping back from the infinite details of frameworks and toolkits, some
> patterns begin to emerge..."
>
> Thanks,
> Simon St.Laurent
> http://simonstl.com/
>
>
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• References:
  • in which I surrender a 15-year-old argument (transforming the Web)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>