Re: CSS + behavior vs. XSL (was: EcmaScript, gone?)

[Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jelks Cabaniss wrote:
> 
> I thought the original impetus behind XSL was to take it "beyond CSS" by adding
> scripting. 

Beyond CSS? Definately. Scripting? Depends on who you talk to. XSL without
scripting is far beyond CSS already.

> Just what is it that XSL will do that CSS + behavior (or CSS + DOM) can't, other
> than say "Hey, I'm way k3wl because I'm expressible in XML and similar to
> Xpointer!"?

Well, CSS+DOM can probably do anything that needs to be done. In fact, the
DOM alone can probably do anything that needs to be done. The problem is
that the more of your information system you build into "scripts" or other
proprietary, ad hoc code, the less robust it is and the less reusable your
information is. So our goal ist build layers of "declarativeness" that
progressively relegate scripting to the margins. We work to replace ad
hocness with agreed-upon standards. XSL is one more layer of
declarativeness. After two or three years, we will look again to see what
people are using the DOM and scripts to do and ask what can be encoded
declaratively and push scripting back into the margins.
 
 Paul Prescod  - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Everything I touch turns into Python.


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