Re: Rexsel — A simpler way of writing XSLT

Hi everyone,

I don't do as much XSLT these days (I moved from technical writing to AI),
but I empathize with how intimidating the XSLT syntax/approach/everything
can be for newcomers. I appreciate that others are looking for ways to make
our little corner of the universe a bit more approachable.

Nowadays I mostly process HTML in Python. The funny thing is, I would kill
for a way to natively process HTML5 in XSLT (without resorting to XHTML)
because the content processing I do would fit a template based approach
very well. But alas, there's no easy way in the Python world.

Side note - I heart RelaxNG quite a bit - so much nicer than DTD! RelaxNG
made my DITA specialization utility possible:

https://github.com/chrispy-snps/DITA-plugin-utilities

I wish I had the time to rewrite that utility in Python, with cleaner
class-based code instead of my Perl spaghetti code.

 - Chris




On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 12:26b/PM Peter Flynn peter@xxxxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 30/06/2024 14:22, Hugh Field-Richards hsfr@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Clearly I should have done some more homework on this, sighb&
> >
> > The thing that prompted me to design Rexsel was all the
> > years spent on using OmniMark, then crossing over to XSLT,
> > and then needing to bpretty-printb some XSLT to make it a
> > bit more readable.
>
> I'm speaking in ignorance of other editors here, as I've been using
> Emacs with xslide-mode for two decades, and it both colourises and
> indents XSLT pretty well, as well as the usual auto-complete. I had
> always assumed other editors did much the same.
>
> > But I take the point that once you get your head round the
> > XSLT syntax it is not a problem,
>
> The problem is not [us] XML-heads: most of us have pointy brackets
> growing out of our ears. The target is programmers of languages which
> use nested indented curly-brace syntax where everything is an argument
> to everything else and where you begin by declaring your entire program
> to be null and void, who expect all other languages to be the same. For
> that demographic, both XMQ and REXSEL may be useful tools.
>
> Alternate syntaxes are always being invented, both as programming
> languages and as markup languages. They keep us looking young and
> beautiful. The only one I have personally found to be of use in recent
> years has been Relax NG compact syntax, simply because life is too short
> to use W3C Schemas.
>
> Peter