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RE: XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar (29 July 2004, Oxford, England

Subject: RE: XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar (29 July 2004, Oxford, England)
From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 05:45:41 -0600
t fo
This is fantastic, especially given the fact that you will have both Dr.
Kay and Dr. Tennison speaking.  If I can find a way to clear my schedule
to be at this event I most certainly will.  

There's just one little thing that I would like to point out as
something that should be considered for elimination in any current and
future collateral for this event and that is the following phrase:

"Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO - How to treat XSLT ***--> like a real
programming language <--*** and how to use XSLT and XSL-FO together"

In case my edits to the text dont clearly point out what I am trying to
say then maybe it can be better understood by my suggestion that using
the term "treat XSLT like a real programming language" would lead the
average developer who doesnt know a lot about XSLT to believe that XSLT
is in fact not a real programming language, something that I know many
on this list will come to the defense of.

Now I do realize that there are many people out there who dont see XSLT
as a real programming language because of the "limitations" it contains
such as dynamic variable assignment or because they seem to think that
all it is is some sort of glorified extension to HTML to allow dynamic
creation of HTML more feasible to the "average" HTML guy (these are all
things I have heard developers say with my own ears which immediately
found them swimming in a bath of my textual wrath*** :) To them I say
only this...  

XQuery will be much easier for you to understand. It has purposely been
designed to limit its feature set and syntactical format to something
that the average developer can understand, take a bite of and not choke
on it because "it's just to difficult to comprehend and therefore
digest"

I dont mean to mock but in the same breath I dont appreciate those who
mock XSLT before theyve taken the time to understand even the most
basic of facts choosing instead to pretend that they "know all they need
to know and thats that XSLT is a joke and not something to use in a
"real" application".

I apologize for criticizing your post because thats not what I am
actually doing.  Evangelizing the use of XSLT is something I would love
to see on a more regular basis. I love the fact that this event is
taking place and look forward to being there if I can.  But giving fuel
to the mocking developers flame by using terms like "treating XSLT like
a real programming language" will not be helpful to the community in any
way and could also cause this same developer to think "why go listen in
on a session on how to make XSLT look like its a real programming
language when I already know how to use a real programming language".
Maybe using a title and description such as: 

[Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO for the procedural developer in all of us]
"This session will showcase and teach XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO that uses a
more familiar procedural style syntax to highlight the power of using
XSLT in your applications while also showcasing the move to use
declarative style syntax and functional programming methodologies to
take this new found power to the next level.  Attendees to this session
will immediately be enabled to take advantage of power and performance
that is available in the advanced features of these XSL based languages
such as template matching and built-in recursive data processing, making
conditional processing decisions without using ANY conditional logic,
grouping data from an unlimited number or data sources, and much, much
more."

Now I have no idea what the particular session you have set up is really
designed to convey to the attendee but I can assure you that a session
that matches the above title and description would encourage an enormous
number of non-XSLT developers to attend the conference for this session
alone.  I spent 2 years as a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft and in
that time I learned that the key to attendance and smiles on the faces
of the attendees after the session was to first entice their attendance
using language and acronyms that they understood while at the same time
extending it into areas that they didnt already understand but wanted
to because they knew it would help make them a better developer.  By
using the familiar terms developers are comfortable it automatically
invoked a sense of comfort and understanding and therefore the desire to
attend because they could associate what they already know with the
things that they wanted to learn.  The smiles came easily when they left
the session with the keys they needed to continue forward in both there
education and implementation into there development projects.

I wish you the very best of luck with this event and hope I am able to
get my schedule cleared long enough to be able to attend myself.

Best regards,

<M:D/>


*** If you have the impression that I type a lot (not sure where you
would get that impression ;) wait until you here me speak in person :D
What can I say... I grew up with 5 sisters and had to somehow find a way
to survive the sea of estrogen I was faced with on a daily basis...
Fighting it only made it worse so I decided to join them instead.  

And now you know ;)




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Zok Briault [mailto:zoe.briault@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 4:19 AM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar (29 July 2004, Oxford, England)
> 
> Invitation to Register for the XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar to be held on 29
July,
> Oxford, England   www.xmlsummerschool.com
> 
> Seminar Overview:
> XSLT is already being used by hundreds of thousands of developers for
> processing and transforming XML documents. The basics of the language
can
> be
> learnt from any good book - learning the art of XSLT programming and
the
> tricks of the trade isn't so easy. In this seminar delegates can find
out
> about the latest developments in XSLT and XSL-FO and get some tips and
> pointers on how to transform themselves into top practitioners.
> 
> Topics covered:
> Introduction to XSLT 1.0 - How to write simple stylesheets that get
real
> work done
> Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO - How to treat XSLT like a real
programming
> language and how to use XSLT and XSL-FO together
> XSLT 2.0 Overview - A review of the new features and a discussion on
the
> progress that has been made by the W3Cs XSLT Working Group
> XSLT 2.0, Schemas and Saxon - How XSLT 2.0s schema support lets your
> stylesheets use user-defined types, substitution names and more
> 
> Chair - Bob DuCharme
> Speakers - Michael Kay, Jeni Tennison
> 
> The seminar is being held as part of the XML Summer School 2004.  For
full
> details and to register, please visit www.xmlsummerschool.com

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