RE: [xsl] Maintaining XSL ...

[cknell@xxxxxxxxxx]

Poorly designed XSLT is hard to maintain like poorly designed code of any type. Well designed XSLT is a treat to work with. You haven't told us enough to make any specific suggestions, but I suspect that the XSL was designed and is maintained by programmers inexperienced in the language. It often takes some time to internalize the design of XSLT, especially if your background is in procedural programming. When you are accustomed to writing programs that say "Do this, and then do that until this is true.", writing and understanding XSLT can be a challenge. I can't tell you how may of my early style sheets where chock-full of <xsl:for-each> elements.

If you give specific examples of what your people find hard to maintain and exactly what they find difficult about it, I expect you will get the advice you need.
-- 
Charles Knell
cknell@xxxxxxxxxx - email



-----Original Message-----
From:     Asit Kharshikar <AsitK@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent:     Tue, 2 Aug 2005 05:28:27 -0700
To:       <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:  [xsl] Maintaining XSL ...

Hello,

I use several XSL files to do translations of xml data. Basically we use
the xsl to house the business logic and generate the presentations of
the data as html. Does anyone have
good methods on how to make the xsl layer more readable and
maintainable. We have people
who try to customize the "look and feel" of the application on the field
and their feedback
is that xsl is *hard* to work with. We need a way to use xsl to generate
the presentation
layer but still provide an easy way for users to customize the generated
presentation.

Help and comments appreciated.

Thanks

Regards
- Asit