Subject: Re: Making tables From: Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 07:07:55 -0500 |
Andrew Bunner wrote: > > Definitely the answer you were looking for. Everybody hates to include > display information in XML. This is something that scipting would fix. From > all I've read, the WG has plan to incorporate scripting into the draft at > some later point. Yes, scripting would allow you to do anything. In fact, with scripting, you don't need XSL at all (as thousands of Python/Ominmark/Perl/Balise programmers have noted). With only JavaScript and the DOM, you can do everything that XSL can do and more -- you can even implement XSL. Any particular existing feature could have been delegated to scripting, but the brilliance of XSL is in NOT DOING SO. Given that we do already have the DOM, the challenge of XSL is to make as much as possible available WITHOUT scripting. The DOM already fulfills the scripting role. Then we can make a reasoned choice about whether scripting is actually necessary, and in what ways. As James Clark says (in his personal "extensibility manifesto": "- The extension mechanism is for extensibility only. It is unnecessary for common tasks." http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list/archive/msg00767.html In this case, I think that what is necessary is a way to match pairs of elements: patterns. <xsl:for-each select="item,item"> <ROW> <xsl:for-each select="item"> <CELL> <xsl:process-children/> </CELL> </xsl:for-each> </ROW> </xsl:for-each> Even if this does not find its way into XSL, your idea of annotating the source document could be done in the DOM before the XSL script runs. That would allow a clean separation of concerns. In fact, it sounds like another point from James Clark's extension manifesto: "- XSL defines a standard mechanism for implementing extension; this would leverage the DOM and probably be defined in IDL." > From > all I've read, the WG has plan to incorporate scripting into the draft at > some later point. The WG has a plan to incorporate *extensibility*. I don't see where they have said that is scripting. In fact, James Clark has said that the WG did not like XSL-note-style scripting. If you read James' note, you'll find that his vision of extensibility does not sound much like "scripting" in the usual sense. Paul Prescod - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco Bart: Dad, do I really have to brush my teeth? Homer: No, but at least wash your mouth out with soda. XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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Re: Making tables, Andrew Bunner | Thread | Re: Fw: Is there a way to define gr, Oren Ben-Kiki |
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