RE: About Constructions rules

Subject: RE: About Constructions rules
From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 19:30:57 -0400
Hi Brandon,

Brandon said:
   Okay... I can begin to see where you're headed now, but I daresay
we're almost completely outside the realm of DSSSL if you want to use
a "push" approach for templates.

Didier says:
No necessaruily. DSSSL-2 could (dependant on the acceptantce from ISO
participant) include template based new constructs and then it would become
within the reach of DSSSL. Don't forget that DSSSL is an evolving thing. I
have in mind its evolution and actually experiment with different path of
evolution (on top of promoting and documenting it, and when time allows it,
to play in OpenJade code)

Brandon said:
   I've actually been wanting to use DSSSL to create an SGML and
template based scripting engine for years now, but determined that I
needed a good implementation of the transformation language to make it
work.

Didier says:
I agree with you that the transformation part has to be implemented and we
never really saw its power in real life implementations.

Brandon said:
The idea is to use architectures to introduce a set of
scripting elements into existing DTDs.  Probably the easiest way to do
this, using HTML an an example, would be to create a new DTD that
simply creates a new document element whose content model is just a
single <HTML> element, but with the scripting elements as inclusions,
meaning that they could show up anywhere in the HTML, as long as
they're nested properly (for those that aren't empty elements).  Using
architectures, the user could rename the elements and their attributes
as needed, among other "customization".
   The DSSSL transformation spec could then take the parsed document,
create an auxiliary grove, which would be the architectural instance
of the scripting elements, and process the whole thing, utilizing the
links from the auxiliary grove back to the document instance to pull
in the non-architectural (HTML, in this case) stuff as needed.
   Does this type of thing fit into your ideas on templates at all,
Didier?

Didier says:
I see it as complementary. There is several "style" or different ways to get
the result we want. Some, obviously from the success XSL has like the
template based model, some like more a procedural model. I personnaly thing
that both are useful have pros and cons. I don't know if we have to rely on
architecture for template, but before answering a quick and thoughtless
answer, I need to think more of you proposal and play with it a bit on paper
(or on screen :-)


Brandon says:
   Well, I'm glad you're enthusiastic about the idea :), but I was
also looking for some comment on the technicalities of fitting the
transformation language into the current architecture.  Of course,
that could be difficult to comment on without knowing more about the
transformation language.  Perhaps when I have a better outline of how
the implementation might work, you'll be able to better answer this.

Didier says:
I think that the grove has an api to manipulate its nodes. To get a better
idea of the in memory grove API provided by OpenJade the best tool to play
with is the DCOM component Grovea.dll. by doing a smal VB app (or java) we
can test how versatile this API is. If we can add, remove, modify nodes the
implementation of the transformation part will be easier.

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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