Architecture-based Processing with DSSSL and Jade

["W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've started putting architectures into real production within ISOGEN by
setting up a base architecture from which all of our internal-use document
types are derived.  I've created DSSSL specs that apply to the
architectural instances and also created functions for doing
architecture-aware processing in the DSSSL spec for a particular DTD
(functions like "is-element-form?", "form-of", "arch-attr-string", etc.).
This has gone a long way toward making it easy to manage a wide variety of
specialized document types with a minimum of extra DSSSL specification
effort.  However, it's still not as complete as I think it can be.

My questions at this point are:

1. Short of putting it on top of something like TechnoTeacher's GroveMinder,
what would it take to get Jade to provide access to both the client
document's grove and the architectural groves derived from it?

2. Are there clever things that can be done to re-use construction rules
for architectural forms from the rules for client element types? What I
think I want is a way to say "if there's no better rule for this element
type, the use the construction rule for the form its derived from in
architecture X".  I know I can do that by making the guts of the
architectural construction rules into functions and then using a default
rule to do the selection, but I was hoping there was a way I could do it
without having to make the architecture's DSSSL spec that indirect.

I haven't worked on any of this long enough to know if I'm even asking the
right questions, but I thought others might have started thinking about this.

Cheers,

E.

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