Re: Pattern and Action Containers (was: XSL Discussion)

[Paul Grosso <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:29 1998 02 23 -0500, David Megginson wrote:
>Jeremie Miller writes:
>
> > First off, I've mentioned in the past that I think a simple separation of
> > the patterns and actions should happen, like:
> > <rule>
> >   <pattern>
> >     <target-element type="p">
> >   </pattern>
> >   <action>
> >     <DIV>
> >       <children/>
> >     </DIV>
> >   </action>
> > </rule>
> > Much of what I'm going to be talking about is based on this...
>
>Absolutely correct -- it is a basic principle of good document type
>design that a series of related elements should appear within a
>container.  There are two advantages to doing so:
>
>1) Software will know when the series is finished without reading ahead one
>   element.
>
>2) Authors can easily cut-and-paste the whole series into a different
>   location.
>
>What is the thinking of the XSL WG on this point?

Here is my answer to Jeremie when he asked the same
question on the dssslist in January--the thinking of
the XSL WG remains that same (it is an open issue).

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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:23:55 -0600
To: dssslist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Paul Grosso <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: XSL Question

At 04:09 1998 01 20 -0500, Jeremie Miller wrote:
>I've just started writing a simple JavaScript based XSL
>arser( http://www.jeremie.com/xparse/xsl/ ), and only have one question so
>far.  It seems like it would be so much easier to read, write, process, and
>understand basic XSL rules if there was a clear definition between the
>pattern and the action, like:
>
><rule>
>    <pattern>
>        <target-element type="special"/>
>    </pattern>
>    <action>
>        <DIV font-weight="bold">
>            <children/>
>        </DIV>
>    </action>
></rule>

We omitted these "wrapper" tags because some of us were concerned about
keeping the size of things to a minimum.  Others of us, in fact, would
prefer to add the wrappers as you suggest (I am in this latter camp myself).
This issue is on the open issues list.

Thanks for your input.

paul



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