RE: [xsl] xsl:when element test with number

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:18 PM 10/24/2003, David wrote:
> > But why are you packing information into the element name anyway? That's
> > what attributes are for.
>
> perhaps but it is common all the same,
> (x)html: h1 h2 h3 h4 h5
> xmlspec: div1 div2 div3 div4

Common, but archaic! XML Spec probably lifts this from TEI (P3 finalized 
1994); XHTML inherits it ultimately from IBM's GML (see 
http://www.romankoch.ch/capslock/minigml.htm for something about this).

These were systems that could not presume that element sub-classification 
by parentage (or even by attributes) would be at all easy in the processing 
layer. Of course, in XSLT this is a piece of cake.

What exactly does this fixed enumeration help with? I've heard it's nice if 
you're doing markup-wrangling in an editor that doesn't know how to deal 
with XML syntax -- and that may be so, though somehow many of us manage 
without -- but you pay an awfully high price for this in terms of 
flexibility, on several layers (user interfaces, stylesheets, 
complexity/adaptability of models).

Just my $0.02 worth, being spilled here on a non-XSL issue. :->

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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