RE: xslt version of Microsoft's Defaultss.xsl

Bryan,

You will find discussion and a working example of passing parameters to
a client-side XSLT processor in MSXML in [1]. But you want to avoid
client-side transformations because you do not have control over the
software and configuration of the client workstation.

Your comments seem to suggest that you would like to be able to specify
parameters to an XSLT transformation in the <?xml-stylesheet?>
processing instruction in the XML source document, or something like
that.

As I talk about in [1], processing instructions are kind of falling out
of favor in many XML communities. Consider that <?xml-stylesheet?> is
the only processing instruction (that I know of) that is specified
anywhere in the W3C. I don't imagine there will be much support in the
W3C membership for extending the <?xml-stylesheet?> PI, if that is what
you're looking for. But, heck, I've been wrong before.

What's more, using Internet Explorer and MSXML, it is possible to have
MSXML 3.0 installed, but configured in side-by-side mode, and the
<?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction will only invoke the dreaded
WD-xsl processor. Yuk. That is, even with <?xml-stylesheet?> you are
still dependent on the configuration of the client workstation.

One alternative is to do the transformation on the server-side. I
understand that we can expect to see servers with XSLT built into the
hardware or firmware sometime in the next couple of years, server-side
transformations are that important. But, granted, I shouldn't have to
make a round-trip to the server and back just to collapse or expand the
view of some data, that is bad design and wastes bandwidth.

If you know that the clients are using IE, then you can write some
script in the HTML page to detect that the required version of MSXML is
installed, ala the MSXML Sniffer. If the required version is absent,
display an error message and be done. Otherwise, write client-side
transformations to your heart's content. How about that?

Cheers,
Stuart 

[1] http://www.perfectxml.com/articles/xml/XsltInMsxml.asp



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