At 2010-05-22 08:12 -0400, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
Note: In the following I am just talking about XSLT. I am not
talking about XSL-FO.
But you cannot ignore that XSLT was designed and written for use with
XSL-FO. The official name of XSL-FO is "XSL" and XSLT is the
transformation language (T) for use with XSL-FO (XSL) = "XSLT". (I
know you know this, but I wanted to underscore it for the readers of
this archive).
XSLT is a programming language. It is used to create programs.
Personally, I never use XSLT to perform styling. When was the last
time you used XSLT to set a font color or background color?
Every day ... when I use it to set the font colour and background
colour in my XSL-FO files, and when I use it to set the font colour
and background colour in my HTML+CSS files.
I use CSS to do styling.
You use CSS to express what style you want, but I suspect you use
XSLT to decide *which* CSS styles go *where* in your HTML+CSS
results. Thus it is your XSLT that is doing the actual (verb)
styling of your information.
It is unfair of you to exclude XSL-FO and include CSS in your
dissertation because they both have the same role. They both are the
vocabulary expressing styles, but neither of them "do styling" which
is the deciding of the application of the styles to be used.
The XSLT transformation is the expression of the algorithmic
application of static styles to portions of a result tree
hierarchy. Whether those static styles are expressed using CSS or
XSL-FO. Sounds like a stylesheet to me.
Thus, I come to my first recommendation.
RECOMMENDATION #1
When you write or talk about an XSLT document, call it a program.
Don't call it a stylesheet. For example, say this: "I wrote an XSLT
program to screen-scrape Yahoo Finance." Don't say this: "I wrote an
XSLT stylesheet to screen-scrape Yahoo Finance."
You say "to-mah-to", I say "to-may-to".
It is regrettable that XSLT is an acronym standing for XML
_Stylesheet_ Language Transformations. As described above, rarely
(if ever) is XSLT used for styling. Thus, the acronym is completely
misleading.
Do you, Roger, use <xsl:stylesheet> or <xsl:transform> as the
document element of your XSLT expressions?
If your users are wary of "stylesheets", then use <xsl:transform> as
the document element and call your expression a "data transformation".
This leads to my second recommendation.
RECOMMENDATION #2
Stop treating XSLT as an acronym. It is just the name of a
programming language, just as Java is the name of a programming language.
Comments?
Why even bring this up? What benefit will you realize in your
day-to-day working with the technology by asking an entire community
of users to change the way they talk about it? Especially after it
has been in active use for over 12 years. Wouldn't you be damaging
the extensive collateral that has built up over all this time if you
start deprecating (or even denigrating indirectly by deprecating)
"XSLT stylesheets"?
XSLT and XQuery are templating and programming languages with XML as
a first-class data construct in the syntax of the language, and
awareness of hierarchy as a semantic of the data structures, unlike
other programming languages where XML is accessed only through a veil
of subroutine calls. To me *that* is the distinction of XSLT/XQuery
that makes it useful both for styling (deciding which styles go where
in a result hierarchy of information and their appearances) and
structured data programming (creating new hierarchies of information
from old hierarchies of information).
I don't think the two concepts of styling and programming can be
untwined in these languages. It is simply the power of these
languages that allow you to do both. So why go to the effort to try
and do so? I'm worried posts like this (and a few others you have
thrown out to the group) are potentially damaging to an industry that
many of us are and have been relying on for so long because lay
people who are shopping around for technology will be left with the
impression that something is wrong when nothing is wrong.
If it ain't broke, why fix it?
If it is powerful enough to do two perceived things, why hide one
under a blanket? Why not underscore the power of it to address the
problems of people who need stylesheets and the people who need data
transformations?
I hope this is considered useful.
. . . . . . . . . . . Ken
--
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