RE: Style vs. transformation

[Rob McDougall <RMcDouga@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Stewart wrote:
"I think this is a valid complaint about the XSL syntax: there is no
syntactic distinction between literals that are intended to be output as
text strings, and keywords that trigger additional processing."

This is something I think I can answer because I had this confusion
originally as well, but after many readings of the spec, I resolved it.

There are no "literals" in the XSL syntax.  If there were literals, then
one could say: <foo><children/></foo>, but one CAN'T.  Within XSL, you
are restricted to the flow objects that the XSL processor understands.
It's extremely convenient that the set of flow objects that that the
MS-XSL processor implements are identical in name and function to their
HTML counterparts, but don't be confused that the XSL is *necessarily*
producing HTML.  It could just as easily produce Postscript, PDF, or
some other display medium.  You cannot use flow objects that are not a)
built in, or b) otherwise defined within your XSL stylesheet.

The upshot of this is that the designers of an XSL processor must avoid
creating any core flow objects with names that conflict with other
keywords (e.g. <children/>), just the same as they must avoid giving two
flow objects the same name.

BTW, this lack of "literals" is a good thing because it makes XSL
validatable.

Rob


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