Subject: RE: [xsl] XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar (29 July 2004, Oxford, England) From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 05:45:41 -0600 |
This is fantastic, especially given the fact that you will have both Dr. Kay and Dr. Tennison speaking. If I can find a way to clear my schedule to be at this event I most certainly will. There's just one little thing that I would like to point out as something that should be considered for elimination in any current and future collateral for this event and that is the following phrase: "Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO - How to treat XSLT ***--> like a real programming language <--*** and how to use XSLT and XSL-FO together" In case my edits to the text dont clearly point out what I am trying to say then maybe it can be better understood by my suggestion that using the term "treat XSLT like a real programming language" would lead the average developer who doesnt know a lot about XSLT to believe that XSLT is in fact not a real programming language, something that I know many on this list will come to the defense of. Now I do realize that there are many people out there who dont see XSLT as a real programming language because of the "limitations" it contains such as dynamic variable assignment or because they seem to think that all it is is some sort of glorified extension to HTML to allow dynamic creation of HTML more feasible to the "average" HTML guy (these are all things I have heard developers say with my own ears which immediately found them swimming in a bath of my textual wrath*** :) To them I say only this... XQuery will be much easier for you to understand. It has purposely been designed to limit its feature set and syntactical format to something that the average developer can understand, take a bite of and not choke on it because "it's just to difficult to comprehend and therefore digest" I dont mean to mock but in the same breath I dont appreciate those who mock XSLT before theyve taken the time to understand even the most basic of facts choosing instead to pretend that they "know all they need to know and thats that XSLT is a joke and not something to use in a "real" application". I apologize for criticizing your post because thats not what I am actually doing. Evangelizing the use of XSLT is something I would love to see on a more regular basis. I love the fact that this event is taking place and look forward to being there if I can. But giving fuel to the mocking developers flame by using terms like "treating XSLT like a real programming language" will not be helpful to the community in any way and could also cause this same developer to think "why go listen in on a session on how to make XSLT look like its a real programming language when I already know how to use a real programming language". Maybe using a title and description such as: [Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO for the procedural developer in all of us] "This session will showcase and teach XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO that uses a more familiar procedural style syntax to highlight the power of using XSLT in your applications while also showcasing the move to use declarative style syntax and functional programming methodologies to take this new found power to the next level. Attendees to this session will immediately be enabled to take advantage of power and performance that is available in the advanced features of these XSL based languages such as template matching and built-in recursive data processing, making conditional processing decisions without using ANY conditional logic, grouping data from an unlimited number or data sources, and much, much more." Now I have no idea what the particular session you have set up is really designed to convey to the attendee but I can assure you that a session that matches the above title and description would encourage an enormous number of non-XSLT developers to attend the conference for this session alone. I spent 2 years as a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft and in that time I learned that the key to attendance and smiles on the faces of the attendees after the session was to first entice their attendance using language and acronyms that they understood while at the same time extending it into areas that they didnt already understand but wanted to because they knew it would help make them a better developer. By using the familiar terms developers are comfortable it automatically invoked a sense of comfort and understanding and therefore the desire to attend because they could associate what they already know with the things that they wanted to learn. The smiles came easily when they left the session with the keys they needed to continue forward in both there education and implementation into there development projects. I wish you the very best of luck with this event and hope I am able to get my schedule cleared long enough to be able to attend myself. Best regards, <M:D/> *** If you have the impression that I type a lot (not sure where you would get that impression ;) wait until you here me speak in person :D What can I say... I grew up with 5 sisters and had to somehow find a way to survive the sea of estrogen I was faced with on a daily basis... Fighting it only made it worse so I decided to join them instead. And now you know ;) > -----Original Message----- > From: Zok Briault [mailto:zoe.briault@xxxxxxxxx] > Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 4:19 AM > To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: [xsl] XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar (29 July 2004, Oxford, England) > > Invitation to Register for the XSLT/XSL-FO Seminar to be held on 29 July, > Oxford, England www.xmlsummerschool.com > > Seminar Overview: > XSLT is already being used by hundreds of thousands of developers for > processing and transforming XML documents. The basics of the language can > be > learnt from any good book - learning the art of XSLT programming and the > tricks of the trade isn't so easy. In this seminar delegates can find out > about the latest developments in XSLT and XSL-FO and get some tips and > pointers on how to transform themselves into top practitioners. > > Topics covered: > Introduction to XSLT 1.0 - How to write simple stylesheets that get real > work done > Advanced XSLT 1.0 and XSL-FO - How to treat XSLT like a real programming > language and how to use XSLT and XSL-FO together > XSLT 2.0 Overview - A review of the new features and a discussion on the > progress that has been made by the W3Cs XSLT Working Group > XSLT 2.0, Schemas and Saxon - How XSLT 2.0s schema support lets your > stylesheets use user-defined types, substitution names and more > > Chair - Bob DuCharme > Speakers - Michael Kay, Jeni Tennison > > The seminar is being held as part of the XML Summer School 2004. For full > details and to register, please visit www.xmlsummerschool.com
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