Re: stylesheets for stylesheets (was Re: Swapping table rows and columns)

Subject: Re: stylesheets for stylesheets (was Re: Swapping table rows and columns)
From: "Oren Ben-Kiki" <oren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 13:58:59 +0200
James Tauber <jtauber@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I've been thinking about XSL-based literate programming on and off
>for the last year or so. At various times I've considered writing FOP in
XML
>and having a stylesheet produce Java source from that XML.

I've also toyed with similar ideas. What I really like is the ability to
generate multiple documentation views from the same source file(s),
something which current LP systems don't do well (if at all). For example it
would be very interesting to be able to generate UML models (assuming a UML
DTD)...

>There was a mailing list xml-litprog-l[1] that unfortunately seems to have
>gone into hibernation.

>
>Perhaps not surprisingly, Robin Cover has collected material on the topic
at
>[2].
>...

>[1] http://www.ems.uq.edu.au/Public/Lists/xml-litprog-l
>[2] http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/xmlLitProg.html

Thanks for the references. I just spent some time going through them, and it
seems that the literate programming people are well aware of XML and its
advantages for them. I'm going to keep an eye on this... I have used noweb
for everything in the previous company I worked in - we even wrote a backend
for generating HTML and for allowing incremental tangling/weaving of large
projects. I miss it sorely today - using JavaDoc just isn't the same.

>I'm not aware of any effort to use XSL for literate programming, although,
>as Ken has pointed out, he has used DSSSL.


The documents in [2] refer to XSLT but seem to underestimate its role
(prehaps due to its state at the time). It might prove possible to implement
a literate programming system using just XSLT, or maybe using just a few
extensions (e.g. using something like SAXON).

Have fun,

    Oren Ben-Kiki


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