Re: xsl self-documentation on the fly /feature request

Dave,

"Pawson, David" wrote:
> 
> Is this a feature request?
> 
> <xt:document('file-name', 'append')....
> 
> I like that. Eric? Mike Kay? comments?
> I don't 'think' it breaks any of the ideologies? Does it?
> (but it does involve state, so perhaps yes it does)

Yes, it could be done like this... but, 4xt, it would require modifying
the internal classes.

There is another option, though which is to extend the XMLOutputHandler
using a specific namespace to control and output the log.

This output handler could accept elements like :

<log:open log:href="myfile.log"/>

and

<log:append>
	<my-result-tree>...</my-result-tree>
</log:append>

This could be made without modifying any internal classes.

Some additional comments :

1) The locks would have to be carefully managed (with the initial
requirement, concurrent access is likely to happen).
2) The log wouldn't be well formed XML (no unique root element).
3) More context info could be passed as parameters to the transformation
(XSL file name, current directory, current datetime, current uid, ...)
to make the log entry more significant.
4) Alternatively, the logging could be done outside the XSLT
transformation (4xt, in the Driver or XSLServlet classes but before or
after the transformation itself) or even in a shell script calling the
transformation (requiring 0% modification :=) ...

Hope this helps.

Eric 



-- 
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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