Re: What's fxslt all about?

> At the end of the day, I am not a computer scientist as much as a 
> template designer looking to get some usefulness out of your work (some 
> sort of template lib?). I don't know if that excludes me from your 
> target audience. It may not be intended for my type I guess :/ In which 
> case, please ignore my whining and moaning.

FXSL is an XSLT 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 implementation of some of the basic
primitives of functional programming, such as higher-order functions and
currying/partial application. Based on these it implements various useful
templates for numerical methods (exponential and logarithmic functions,
trigonometric functions, reverse functions, finding the real solutions of
equations of one variable, numerical differentiation and integration),
random number generation, some text processing, some combinatorics, etc.

Most of the value of FXSL is in the very powerful templates for functional
programming in XSLT. This is intended to be used by XSLT *programmers*.

However, even a non-programmer can use the various useful templates (as
listed above) of the FXSL library that solve specific problems in
particular problem areas.

The four papers on FXSL are not intended as a substitute for a good
introduction to functional programming. All of them contain links to nice
such introductions. In particular, I highly recommend the book 
"Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming", by Simon Thompson.

As in any learning process, there are things that must come well before
other things and trying to jump directly to the more advanced concepts
usually does not work.

On the other side, a system that does not require any specific level of
knowledge and understanding from its users (what have been known as
monkey-proof or idiot-proof systems in the past) will not offer any useful
functionality.


Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev
FXSL developer,

http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL
Resume: http://fxsl.sf.net/DNovatchev/Resume/Res.html



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