Re: alternating tags in a list?

Hi.

It sounds as if your working experience is similar to my own. Situations
arise when code has to be hacked *now* in the most expediant way. As
you point out, figuring a neat "proper" declaritive way of doing it later
if fine, but if I need to drop in a scripted hack I need to.

I find it scary when people start talking about steering the language a
certian way as it will force developers to code by somebody elses notion of
a "good way". I resent people policing my development frrom afar and
deciding what the best way for me to tackle my develpment is. Everybody is
entitled to place on the table what they think would be a good thing for
their sphere of concern, just not some purists dream because ti will be
good for everybody else.

I really don't want to be backed into another corner where yet another MS
tool is the most viable option, but I will use what I feel to be the best
tools at hand, and unortunately if the W3C keep script out of XSL it looks
like for our intranetnet development I'll be using an NT box, will IIS, MS
XSL, delivering to MS IE, in short, the whole front end delivery will be an
MS solution.

My point isn't to spark another MS debate, it could be any company in
question, and my own idea of a perfect world doesn't include MS domination,
however there are reason why MS is chewing up the IT industry, and the
development of XSL is shaping up to be another prime example of how MS is
doing it.

XSL is a direct threat to ASP, you can garantee that MS will be all over
it, and if they can manage another "embrace and extend" flanking maneuver,
they will. The W3C are fools if they ignore this. Denying the reality of it
will just see them loosing control of main-stream XSL to MS.

Personaly I hope the W3C can avoid making this mistake.

Cheers
     Guy.





xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 12/17/98 10:22:45 PM

To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
Subject:  Re: alternating tags in a list?





[SNIP]
  Imagine someone else's XSL formatter lands on my desk one
day. A client says, "The gulf war just broke out again,
and I need you to do this new CNN-style layout to repurpose
some of our documents from the last conflict." To my
horror, I find out that I can't modify the existing
XSL script to do what I need. So do I have to rewrite
the entire thing from scratch in another XSL-like language,
or can I simply drop to a scripting language to do whats
needed in an emergency, with full knowledge of what I'm
doing?

I find this whole discussion sort of like the JNI issue in
Java. Yes it's ugly. Yes, it makes stuff less portable.
Yes, it is harder to maintain, etc. But sometimes you
absolutely *need it* Later on, you can rewrite it in
a less ugly, more pleasing manner (pure Java), or in
XSL's case - a post process step.
I hope the XSL WG doesn't do the unthinkable: force everyone
to use Microsoft's "extended standard"

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 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list