Re: [xsl] many to one OR one to many?

Subject: Re: [xsl] many to one OR one to many?
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 18:10:51 +0100

  I'm wrestling with:
  whether I would go with multiple small xml files that I could compile 
  into one output for the print, but would match the html files 
  essentially
  OR
  one xml source file that matches the print, but can be output into 
  multiple files (via some element in the structure that separates) for 
  the web.

It is possible to have both:

have individual files for the bits then rather than pull in lots of files
with xslt's document() function, just have a single file that pulls in
everything in an appropriate structure. That way you can process as
individual documents and at otehr times as one combined doc.

<!DOCTYPE book [
<!ENTITY preface SYSTEM preface.xml">
<!ENTITY chapter1 SYSTEM something.xml">
...
]><book>
  &preface;
  &chapter1;
...
</book>

or, if you prefer

<!DOCTYPE book [
<!ENTITY preface SYSTEM preface.xml">
<!ENTITY sect1.1 SYSTEM something.xml">
...
]>
<book>
  <frontmatter>
  &preface;
  <frontmatter>
<sect>
<head>chapter1 </head>
  &sect1.1;
  &sect1.2;
...
</sect>
<sect>
<head>chapter 2</head>
  &sect2.1;
  &sect2.2;
...
</sect>

</book>



  Anybody experienced one or both of these scenarios and have some 
  pointers?  I have seen some references to doing this, but not much more 
  than that.

I've tried all three approaches in different projects. Actually it
doesn't seem to make much difference, some things are slightly easier
than others depending on which choice you take, but issues surrounding
this choice never seem to really dominate the project, ie making a
diferent choice would have affected some of the processing tools, but
really any choice can be made to work...

One particular diference is cross linking, If you you use the first or
third choice your input XML can use XML ID/IDREF linking as it's all one
document, but if your source is separate xml documents you need to use
some syntax for external linking. So it depends a bit on how much cross
referencing between the parts you expect, and how much help from
authoring tools you want for maintaining consistency of the references.

David


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