RE: The Future of Browser-Bound XML?

~There's XSLT... much more powerful, but it basically just converts your XML back
~to HTML... kind of defeats the purpose of doing away with HTML in the first place?

back to HTML? I am confused here. I think the point is that your information should start with XML and convert to HTML print or whatever. XML is a great way to single source. Write it in XML and convert it to everything else. It was always explained to me as XML is like the database that stores the content, HTML just formats it so that it can look pretty and be readable.

~Then there's XSLFO... but from what I've read that's more aimed at the printed
~word, and all the examples I've seen are diplayed as PDF files.

Correct, however there are many other forms of converting XML to printed outputs. We tend to use Perl and LaTeX. But you could use XSL-FO and passiveTex to make postscript files or pdf. There are other ways like DSSSL which was very popular with formatting SGML, but I think a lot of people have strayed away from DSSSL these days.

~So what are we supposed to use to display XML files to the web without first
~changing them into the HTML/CSS paradigm? Or is that how we're "supposed" to do it?

Yes that is how you are supposed to do it.
You can use css to transform the XML but the support from the different browsers is just rediculous. What ever Netscape supports IE doesn't and what IE supports Netscape doesn't. And then there is Opera which supports more of css2 than either Netscape or IE. But that doesn't help any either. 
Using a combination of XSL and css you can accomplish a lot of what you need very quickly and easily.

We are working on several different stylesheets that will allow different people in the company to see the same content in a way that is geared towards their final output. For example we have an HTML preview of XML docs that is in the format of training materials for our trainers. They can edit the XML in XMetaL in a pleasing interface and then click a button to see what the end result will look like. These materials will end up being printed, but for a quick glance HTML works very good and is faster than generating a pdf.
These files that the trainers are editing are actually fragments of the overall help. So by them being industry experts and modifying the content to make their training materials better they are actually making the rest of the help and other materials that are generated from the same sources better too. Of course there is a lot that goes into the editing and approval but you get the idea.

Hope this helps you get the big picture on all this.

Brad


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