Re: Can I use XSL to convert HTML to WML ?

Hello Zhang:

At 02:35 AM 4/5/00 +0800, you wrote:
>    I received a project to convert HTML to WML, I'm not sure if XSL can do
>the job (HTML is really complex),or I must parse the HTML and output proper
>WML .

XSL can do this only if your HTML is well-formed XML (which it probably
isn't). If the HTML is valid to an HTML DTD, converting it to well-formed
XML is not too difficult. (It is largely a matter of normalizing it into
"fully-tagged" format and changing the syntax of empty tags.) If it is not,
then bad luck; the conversion may be difficult to automate. If you have a
good HTML parser it might be possible to do it with that: it depends on
what kinds of weirdness is in your HTML and how your parser handles it.

Check out the HTMLTidy tool by Dave Raggett at w3.org.

>If I can ,could someone explain it in some detail and give me some
>examples?

The best thing for you to do would be famililarize yourself with some XSL
introductory materials (you can find some at http://www.xslinfo.com) along
with some basic materials on the requirements of XML syntax. (You need
especially to understand the concept of well-formedness.) I'd recommend
Neil Bradley's book -An XML Companion- for these purposes -- at $US35.00 in
a new (2nd) edition it's well worth it.

>    And I also know there is a tool named  Cocoon , can it do the conversion
>, and is the result good enough?

I don't have personal experience with Cocoon, but I understand it can be
wired to an XSL processor of choice, so yes -- IF your HTML is well-formed.

Good luck,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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