[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: *input* filters
At 08:37 AM 3/3/99 +0800, James Tauber wrote: >It occurred to me the other day: > >Any reason we can't have *input* filters in XSL, ie some specification of a >conversion to apply to a non-XML files in order to produce the source tree? and then James wrote again, in a different message (result-tree vocabularies and non-XML serialisation): >I really like being able to specify non-XML serialisation via the result >namespace. > >What I would like to see is people taking existing non-XML formats and >developing: > > a) a namespace URI > b) a DTD representing the existing non-XML format > c) an output filter to convert documents conforming to the DTD into the >non-XML format > >We already see this with HTML 4.0 in XT (and others XSL engines?) I'm deeply concerned that this line of thought is going to make XSL do (even more) too many things. I don't think XSL itself should be concerned with parsing documents or serializing trees. Putting all that functionality into XSL builds XSL out into an ever-growing monster that makes enormous demands on implementors if they even ponder 'complete'. It seems wiser to go the other direction, and drop all mention of 'XML source documents' and let the parser handle that. An HTML parser that generates SAX events (HEX - http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/ak/java/hex.html) is available, for example. Let XSL work on a source tree and a result tree, and leave the rest of the processing to other processors, whether parsers for reading documents or document constructors for serializing the tree. Lest Guy think I'm just writing this for the benefit of someone in marketing, I've written a much more general piece on this issue, Toward A Layered Model for XML, available at http://www.simonstl.com/articles/layering/layered.htm. The last figure, http://www.simonstl.com/articles/layering/layered3.gif, shows how non-XML document sources might be intergrated with XML processing. This was talking more about parsing issues in particular, but an XSL filter (like XT) could, for instance, fit anywhere in this process. Multiple XSL filters could even appear. Simon St.Laurent XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (April) Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies http://www.simonstl.com XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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