XSLT FAQ ideas (was Re: trouble with namespaces)

Michael Kay wrote:
> The FAQ has become too big, and it contains answers to many 
> infrequently-asked questions.

Given that it's largely a collection of extracts from xsl-list posts that
answer real questions, I don't think this is an entirely fair criticism.  I
agree that it is perhaps not making enough of a distinction between esoteric
"nice-to-knows" and truly frequently asked questions. It's more just that it
needs to be better indexed, and many of its entries on closely related topics
need to be edited into a single bit of prose that is The Last Word on the
subject.

I was thinking that something more like a Wiki [0] version of the FAQ would be
a good idea. I am a big fan of carefully edited, centralized FAQs like the
excellent Perl FAQ and docs [1], but the decentralized model might work well,
too. However, I tried several different Wiki software packages and I wasn't
happy with any of them. There's also the halfway-in-between idea that the PHP
docs use: one or two people edit the document that's split up into separate
sections, each having its own little moderated message board where users add
their own notes. [2]

> I think it would be a good idea if we could decide on a "top ten most
> frequently asked questions" to go on the front page. Here's my starter
> list:
> 
> * How do I output NBSP?
> * How do I output an ampersand in a URL?
> * How do I update a variable?
> * How do I match elements in the default namespace?
> * How do I eliminate duplicate values?
> * How do I group on common values?

Agreed.

* What are these garbage characters in my UTF-8 output?
* How do I split up my source data into fixed-length tables or pages?
* How do I alternate colors in table rows?
* How do I duplicate my input, but change one element?
* Why doesn't my stylesheet work? PS: it uses the WD-xsl namespace.
* How do I pass parameters into my stylesheet? I'm using MSXML / IE.

 [0] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWiki
 [1] http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/faq/perlfaq4.html
 [2] http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.xslt.php

Mike

-- 
  Mike J. Brown   |  http://skew.org/~mike/resume/
  Denver, CO, USA |  http://skew.org/xml/

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