[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The identity transform and attributes
At 11:22 AM 1/21/2008, Andrew wrote:
On 21/01/2008, Jesper Tverskov <jesper@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The old way even has the power and fascination of being just one > template, the identity template. This is how the identity template > looks in two specs, in hundreds of books, in thousands of articles and > tutorials, and in millions of XSLT stylesheets until this very day. > > Why change things for the worse just to confuse people? A pedagogical principle I try to follow wherever possible is "only one new thing at a time". Part of the "power and fascination" of the classic identity template is precisely that it confronts the beginner, in compact form, with so many new things at once, including (at least): 1. The XSLT processing model (recursive descent of the tree by applying and matching templates) 2. Implicit definitions and obscure usages in XPath (what is meant by 'node()', '@', '*') 3. "Shallow copy" of a single node ("having something within xsl:copy") While this all makes it a marvel to behold once you're in the know, to the uninitiated the identity template can be simply baffling, as it presents too much complexity for an innocent brain to assimilate at once. Yet, for the same reason, it makes for a particularly informative and entertaining discussion in a classroom setting. I still believe that "XSLT is easy", but this is most true for those who take the time to give themselves, or get, a bit of formal instruction, whereby such knotty perplexities can be patiently disentangled. :-) Cheers, Wendell ====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================
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