RE: [xsl] Is this strategy for runtime fixed-width->xml conversions worthwhile?

["Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> If I'm restricted to XSLT 1.0, how viable is my approach?  
> I'm guessing if my input is truly "fixed", with no repeating 
> groups or conditional transformation blocks, this should work 
> fine.  If I have either repeating groups or conditional 
> transformation blocks, that makes it a little more 
> complicated, but I'm not sure how much more.

I don't think I would have wanted to tackle the example in this article
using XSLT 1.0: I would have done it in Java. You can certainly do simple
string-handling in 1.0, however.
> 
> This article was written around the Saxon 8.1 timeframe.  
> Would this article change significantly if it was updated to 
> reflect more recent Saxon releases?

No. The spec was already pretty stable by then. Most of the changes since
then have been refining the definition of edge cases.
> 
> Concerning features of Saxon, I'm not certain exactly what 
> "schema-aware" means.  

See http://www.stylusstudio.com/schema_aware.html for an explanation.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/