Re: [xsl] XSLT vs Web Components

Subject: Re: [xsl] XSLT vs Web Components
From: "Matthew L. Avizinis matt@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 17:00:53 -0000
I appreciate all the responses.  quite informative as usual.
I was just curious to get a few opinions because encountering a problem,
then finding a solution sometimes involves deciding between a tried and
true method which might be more difficult but likely to be around a
while, or taking a leap of faith that a new method will catch on fire,
for instance the way node.js, nosql, and json has for a certain class of
problems. 
xml and xslt has been a good solution for my employer for a decade now
and I'm glad I went that route, but personally I was disappointed (yes,
I got over that a some time ago and moved on) that xslt didn't take hold
more with browser developers.
Regards,
/Matthew L. Avizinis/
Gleim Publications, Inc <http://www.gleim.com>
	

On 9/11/2014 4:35 PM, Mark Giffin m1879@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On 9/11/14 7:46 AM, Matthew L. Avizinis matt@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> One of the primary uses of XSLT is transforming xml to html, it seems
>> like.  I don't have data handy, but based on what I've read on this
>> list over the past dozen years or so, seems like a reasonable enough
>> conclusion.
>> I've recently been reading about X-Tags, Polyfil, Web Components,
>> etc., and tinkering with it. (for instance, x-tags.org,
>> webcomponents.org, and
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Tools_and_frameworks/x-tags).
>> It seems like pretty cool stuff and it occurs to me that by using it
>> one could pretty much eliminate the use of xslt for such
>> transformation, if I understand it correctly.
> I can see a lot of uses for them, but I'm having trouble imagining how
> web components would eliminate the use of XSLT. Can you explain more
> what you mean? They are not presented as a transformation language.
> They're actually presented as a browser-native way to do UI widgets
> that are easy to share and use for web apps.
This is where I could be out of my depth at this point because I haven't
had nearly as much experience with it yet like I've with xslt.  Having
said that, I was thinking along the lines of what J. Kosek mentioned in
his reply and I was currently thinking only in regard to web browsers. 
It seems custom elements in a given schema could be defined to present a
particular way without the need to transform them.  Of course, the data
might need to be filtered first which might require a xslt transform,
but getting it finally to the browser seems like it would be simpler.

>
>> 1) Do you think the web components concept will catch on widely?
> Yes most likely in my opinion.
>>   2) will they be supported by browser developers natively
>> eventually, do you suppose?
> They already are supported in Google Chrome and Firefox Nightly (you
> have to enable a flag). You don't need polyfills in these two browsers
> that I have seen after working with them a bit.
>
> Mark Giffin
>
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