embedding html tags in xsl?

Hi all,

I've been seeing lots of examples of xsl stylesheets where html tags are
placed (hard-coded?) in the xsl style sheet. For example, I've seen:

<xsl:template match="/">
<HTML>
   <BODY BGCOLOR="#808080">
      <H1>Product List</H1>
      <B>
          <xsl:value-of select="product"/>
      </B>
   </BODY>
</HTML>
</xsl:template>

The same can also be done for components such as buttons, text area, etc. My
concern is that once html tags are introduced into a style sheet, its
flexibility has been compromised, and that xsl style sheet can only be used
to output html.

An improvement on the above might be something like:

<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:element name="html">
   <xsl:element name="body">
            <xsl:attribute name="bgcolor">#808080<xsl:attribute/>
         <xsl:element name="h1">Product List</xsl:element>
         <xsl:element name="br">
             <xsl:value-of select="product"/>
         </xsl:element>
   </xsl:element>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

While this is more of a pure xsl solution, it still requires the output
target to support an element named "html" or "body", etc. From a design
standpoint how can I not lock myself into writing an html specific
stylesheet? My understanding is that an xsl style sheet should be generic
enough to handle any output (simply change the xsl:output, right?). Are we
just not there yet? Perhaps some notion of a meta-tag that describes some
xsl elements? Do I have to wait for total support for formatting objects
before I can be this flexible?

Can anyone shed light on this? Share some opinions?

Thanks

 - Jerry


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

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