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RE: More XSL Discussion

Subject: RE: More XSL Discussion
From: Jonathan Marsh <jmarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:05:05 -0800
jonathan marsh
		-----Original Message-----
		From:	Sean Mc Grath [mailto:digitome@xxxxxx]
		Sent:	Wednesday, February 25, 1998 9:15 AM
		To:	xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
		Subject:	Re: More XSL Discussion

		At 10:17 25/02/98 -0500, you wrote:
		>Sean Mc Grath wrote:
		>> 
		>> So what are you saying? That doing this:
		>> 
		>> <!-- XSL based report writer written in two seconds.
Understandable
		>> in one second, and a lot easier to write, maintain and
run than
		>> an equivalent perl, python, omnimark, c++, scheme, tcl,
adept program
		>> would ever be -->
		>> <element type = "chapter">
		>>  <element type = "sect1">
		>>   <target-element type = "title">
		>>    println (...)
		>> 
		>> is an abuse of XSL?

		[Paul Prescod]
		>No. It is simply not XSL. XSL specifies a mapping from an
input to an
		>output. No matter how interesting one half or the other may
be, that
		>half is *not XSL* without the other half. What you have
above is an
		>XSL-like language for report writing -- which is probably
quite
		>useful...it just isn't XSL. 

		I contend it is XSL. There is nothing in the spec. that I
can
		see that says "you must have a flow object". Quite right too
		IMHO.
I also would contend it is XSL.  Creating a text node from an input element
is not only legal, but should be common.  But the unanswered question is:
what is the text that is generated?  If it is just plain text this is fine.
If it is generating text that happens to include ?<foo>? this is also fine.
But the text ?<foo>? should not be confused with an element of type ?foo?.
Just because they look the same when they are reduces to a text stream does
not mean that the tree structures are the same.  And if (as we hope to do
eventually) we pass the structure directly to the rendering engine (IE)
without outputting and then reparsing the whole output, you might get
unexpected results.  Or we will have to go through a time-consuming process
of walking the whole tree and looking for tags that still need to be parsed,
or else just say that you screwed up and display the tag as text instead of
markup.  We are developing ways to address this problem now.

		I further contend that using, say, msxsl (yes, I know it is
only
		a technology preview of a moving target) without flow
objects
		to munge XML is pretty darn useful. It has already saved
		me many hours of tedium doing reports/queries/harvesting
		etc. of XML docs.
Glad you are finding it useful in its current primitive state!


Jonathan Marsh
phone   425.703.4591
 <mailto:jmarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> jmarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




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