Re: Is DSSSL-O dead?

["Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <bradmcc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Frank Boumphrey wrote:
> 
>     In part XSL was proposed because of DSSSL's fearsome reputation for
> difficulty, a reputation that in part has been fostered by the proponents of
> DSSSL themselves. It seems that when 'disselites' speak only the elite
> 'disselites' can understand.(I will make a disclaimer right now that there
> are exceptions, for example Paul Prescods tutorial is a model of clarity).
> 
>     Having just finished teaching a course on style-sheets, I wonder if that
> fearsome reputation is not a little over-rated.
> 
>     I identified the following four areas
> that I thought the students would have difficulty with.
> 
>     1. The concept of flow objects.
>     2. The concept of pre-fix operands
>     3. The lack of suitable tools for experimentation
>     4. The lack of suitable documentation for teaching at an entry level.
> (And even experienced programmers learning a new language benefit from entry
> level materials)
> 
>     Much to my surprise
> 
> 1. presented absolutely no difficulty at all provided the concept was
> presented right up front.
> 
> 2. presented much less difficulty than I thought, the students treated the
> pre-fix operands as rather a game, competing with one another to create the
> most outlandish and non-readable expression.
> 
> 3. I wrote a very simple little teaching application that enabled the
> students to play with the rules and output HTML. This more than anything
> else conquers the "boredom" factor and turns an abstract discussion into a
> concrete one. XSL may have taken off because a parser was provided right
> from the beginning.
> 
> 4. This remains a problem Paul Prescod and David Germain's tutorials are
> excellent, but they are not aimed at the lite version, and Jade requires a
> DTD to operate, and is non exactly user-friendly. A tool for XS should
> operate without a DTD.
> 
>     DSSSL is an incredibly powerful language, in fact all the other
> languages evince a "I want to be like Mike" attitude (for non US readers
> this refers to a Nike Ad starring Michael Jordan), and I for one would hate
> to see it relegated again to the marginalia of document authoring.
> 
>     It strikes me that all the perceived problems are eminently "fixable"
> 
> Frank Boumphrey
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

In my 27 years in the computing world, I have yet to encounter any 
*concept* that couldn't have been made pretty obvious by being presented
in well crafted examples (reinforced by reference to
carefully "graded" abstractions...), rather than being
promulgated in hocus-pocus artificial syntax ex nihilo.  

Emmanuel Kant's
3 "Critiques" provide the background for much of this, and,
alas, there seem to be few computer scientsts who have mastered
Kant, and Kant himself was not a practitioner of the pedagogical
implications of his own profound insights....    

Just some thoughts....

\brad mccormick

-- 
   Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
   Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@xxxxxxxxxx
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<!THINK [SGML]> Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list