[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: HTML is a formatting/UI language
I wanted to expand on my comments last night. Håkon Wium Lie wrote: > > There is a small cost involved in the server-side conversion, yes. But > you can still do the client side processing since all your data is > still there. HTML and browsers are being asked to expand their role beyond being the terminal of the 1990's. The browser has become an application platform (this concept is hardly new). Technologies like 'Dynamic HTML', Java and Javascript have formed what has been thought of as the browser platform. I am suggesting that XML + XSL has alot to add to this equation. Using the well known MVC (model view controller) paradigm, the model/document is expressed in XML and the view is expressed in HTML ... the typical case uses a GUI but HTML is appropriate for non-graphic UI as well, fine, no argument. For any sort of sophisticated program design it remains helpful to have a separate document layer. XSL is a terrific way to link the XML document/model layer with the HTML view layer. As such, essentially any UI which can be created in something like VB can also be created using the browser platform and standards. There is a common misconception that environments like VB have the ability to create a more sophisticated UI for 'in-house' applications. This is untrue if we use sophisticated and standard tools such as XSL and JavaScript. If Java is also tightly integrated into the browser environment e.g. XPConnect, it will also play in this environment. In this architecture, The browser is the client and XML is the 'RPC' wire format for distributed web applications. The distributed object call e.g. CORBA or DCOM becomes: client-> HTTP request PDU = MIME message with Content-Type: text/xml or application/xml server does something with the XML request and returns: HTTP response PDU = MIME message with Content-Type: text/xml or application/xml As someone who has been doing distributed objects for years, I see the tradeoff as being a few extra bytes of wire representation (XML is lengthier than a binary format) versus the ease of passing messages across firewalls etc. What I am taking about is not necessarily a better way to write HTML pages or distribute HTML content rather a better way to write distributed applications (those applications which until now are typically written using distributed object technologies). To the extent that the logic of client side processing can be expressed as a set of transformations, XSL is a declarative language which interfaces with the user interface layer via generation of HTML. Jonathan Borden http://jabr.ne.mediaone.net XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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