XSL for non-programmers

["Eric E. Cohen" <cybercpa@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am a non-programmer who had quite an easy time with XSL. You can do a
> usability study on me if you like :-)

I will echo this. I firmly believe you can teach almost anyone basic XSL for
displaying, sorting, and filtering XML files. I do not think the same is
true for VBA, VB, JScript, VBScript, Python, OmniMark, or Supralapsarianism.

There is understandably very little decent _current_ IE5-oriented XSL
tutorial literature available for anyone - and even less DOM-oriented
materials available for "non-programmers." I will echo Linda van den Brink's
message: I can understand XSL, and I can teach XSL to non-programmers.

All of the DOM training materials I have found include only snippets and are
oriented for experienced programmers. There are no step by step guides - DOM
by Example - "cut and paste and follow the instructions to use in your own
spreadsheet." Every tutorial and article I have seen assumes you can take an
example of a partial sub-routine and incorporate it into your work. I am not
programming illiterate - I do enough VBA to do Access programming. But I
have not seen enough illustrated DOM tutorials at a level I can understand
to incorporate XML in Access or Excel.

XML is sweeping the land. But it will reach the mainstream when we move away
from having to compile your own software or configure your own Java
environment to run the software. And XSL will be more popular when the dust
settles and Crystal Reports will let you create XSL from an XML data file.

Just my 2.2 cents, as adjusted for inflation.

<ec />
www.computercpa.com/xml2.html


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