Re: [xsl] XSLT use cases; data-centric to document-centric transformations

[David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Now I want to transform this XML into an FO-document which represents an 
> invoice. The WYSIWYG-tools I know, create one big template containing 
> all the static text someone inputs (the logo and the name of the 
> company, the address, the text before and after the product-list) and of 
> course the instruction which converts the product-xml into a table.

I don't think that is necessarily a problem with the tools.
I write my xslt using emacs but probably would end up with a similar
style.

If the structure of the result is mainly influenced by the structure of
the input, you will naturally end up with lots of "small" templates
and the structure of the stylesheet will have a less direct effect (so
called push style) if the structure of the result is mainly influenced
by the stylesheet (eg if the input is just a big flat table) then you
will end up with fewer match templates (often just one, just matching /)
and the so called pull style. One of XSLT's great strengths is it allows
you to seemlessly mix these two styles and a typical stylesheet is
somewher in between (because a typical document is neither all "data"
nor all "document".

As has been mentioned the large single match template may be
refactored using named templates if that is appropriate.

David


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