[xsl] Praise for XSLT 2.0 and Saxon 8

Subject: [xsl] Praise for XSLT 2.0 and Saxon 8
From: JBryant@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 11:33:18 -0500
I just want to post a public thank you to the XSL working group and to 
Mike Kay for XSLT 2.0 and Saxon 8 (which lets me use XSLT 2.0).

I just completed a stylesheet that finds each of 1,513 terms in a 1,900+ 
page book and turns each term into a link (one of three different kinds of 
links at that). I first tried a 1.0 solution and wrote a recursive 
template, which promptly ran out of memory. Saxon said I had a looping 
problem, but I didn't (not Saxon's fault - that message is right most of 
the time). My template worked against a subset of the input, so it wasn't 
the template. I just had a BIG list of stuff to recurse over.

Then I tried the XSLT 2.0 way and used analyze-string. In addition to 
working, it much simplified and reduced the code. Working is king, of 
course, but readable and maintainable are big on my list of criteria for 
good code.

So now I have a pretty straightforward stylesheet that does the job in 
about 3 minutes. Given the size of the task (comparing the content of 
about 1,400 description nodes against a list of 1,513 keywords and 
replacing with links), that's fine performance, IMHO.

Thanks much!

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)

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