RE: Leventhal's challenge misses the point

>Firstly, I do not believe that non-programmers can't use XSL. I *am* a
>non-programmer (and the fact that I subscribe to this list doesn't change
>that) and I *have* learnt (well.. or am learning) to use XSL.

I'll bet that most non-programmers who could learn XSL could just as easily
learn enough JavaScript + DOM (with extensions if needed) to accomplish the
same result.  For example, I've watched plenty of non-programmers,
especially those in publishing, learn (on the Mac) AppleScript and/or
Frontier's UserTalk.

We already have "HTML folks" learning simple JavaScript for web pages, why
is it such a stretch to use the same language for transformation?  Isn't it
easier to learn one language instead of two?


>I think it would be hard to come by such (Renaissansistic) people. What's
>wrong with having a team of people who complement each other if you want to
>do professional electronic publishing, to the Web or otherwise?

Agreed.  But, I think this view favors CSS + JavaScript + DOM.  CSS is much
easier for "the HTML crowd" than XSL, and JavaScript + DOM is more
familiar, flexible & general purpose than XSL for the scripting/programming
crowd.

I agree with Leventhal that the effort that has gone and is going into XSL
has set the Web back.  Imagine if all the hard work and brain power that
the XSL commitee has invested in XSL -- and all the implementers have done
-- went into CSS1, 2 and future versions, plus any extensions to the DOM
needed to simplify transformation.  Surely we'd have better CSS support in
MSIE, better print support in CSS, another round of improvements to the DOM
-- and perhaps more progress on XPointer, XLink and an XML query language.

cheers,

-- SSL, PreFab Software <http://www.prefab.com/>



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