Re: XML + (XSL | CSS) ?

["Michael Kay" <M.H.Kay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I believe one of the reasons for the interest in XSL is the
MSXSL parser. It
>is very difficult to get interested in a hypothetical
subject, but the
>parser has allowed us to construct viewable pages from XML.
I have just
>finished using it to translate Jon Bosaks Shakespeare plays
marked up in XML
>to HTML.
>
>There are other conversion tools out there, but they come
without clear
>instructions and are difficult for the average intelligent
user to use. On
>the other hand it takes most of my students only about 5
mins to get the
>hang of MSXSL. (No I don't even own microsoft stock!!)
>
I did the same and I found it appallingly difficult, in fact
I didn't succeed in getting a decent rendition of the
Shakespeare except by "cheating" (generating HTML tags in
CDATA sections, rather than generating flow objects). In the
end I had about 250 lines of XSL; and it doesn't work
properly for most people because of the configuration
limitations associated with running client-side ActiveX
objects.

I've produced the identical rendition of the Shakespeare
plays using my SAXON package, run server-side either from
ASP pages or from Java servlets. In the first case it's 100
lines of code and in the second 200 (the extra is just red
tape); in my view the result is far more intuitive and
extensible (so long as you're a programmer), and it runs
anywhere. So my conclusion from the MSXSL prototype was to
steer well clear of the thing until it improves! But of
course, usability is a subjective matter.

Do have a look at SAXON:
http://home.iclweb.com/icl2/mhkay/saxon.html

It includes the Shakespeare examples.
Cheers, Mike Kay


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