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Re: A question of style

Subject: Re: A question of style
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:11:57 -0400
Re:  A question of style
Hi,

Old thread (I'm just back from Europe).

I have seen xsl:element used (and heard it defended) by developers who are using particular pieces of XML-aware software that require DTDs to support some features such as content completion (and not just for validation). By sticking to xsl:element and xsl:attribute, they can write stylesheets using elements only in the XSL namespace and conforming to a nominal XSLT DTD.

This has always struck me as an argument to use a different tool. Be that as it may, it's a reason, and perfectly defensible if you accept the premise that the software being implicated is the only thing that will do.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 02:41 PM 7/7/2010, Dan wrote:
I just started working with some stylesheets developed by someone else and
was surprised at some things I saw. They aren't wrong, it is a style issue
I believe, but was wondering if there is any advantage or disadvantage to
this approach.

I typically try to write as little code as possible. If I don't have to
use an XSLT element to do something, then why type all the extra code. So
I might do something like this:

<xsl:template match="foo"">
   <newelement att1="a" att2="b">Boilerplate text here</newelement>
</xsl:template>

what I came across today was much more verbose like this:

<xsl:template match="foo">
  <xsl:element anme="newelement">
     <xsl:attribute name="att1">a</xsl:attribute>
     <xsl:attribute name="att2">b</xsl:attribute>
     <xsl:text>boilerplate text here</xsl:text>
  </xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

Any comments on either approach? I'll use the xsl:element and xsl:text
constructs when I need to compute something or I'm trying to control the
formatting of text (use of whitespce), but those are real reasons for
using these constructs. When the content is straight forward why would you
go to all the extra work?

..dan


======================================================================
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
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  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================

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