Subject: RE: Leventhal's challenge misses the point From: Linda van den Brink <lvdbrink@xxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 16:32:10 +0200 |
I must protest to both of your interpretations to what I said. Firstly, I do not believe that non-programmers can't use XSL. I *am* a non-programmer (and the fact that I subscribe to this list doesn't change that) and I *have* learnt (well.. or am learning) to use XSL. Secondly, IMO it *would* matter if non-programmers couldn't use XSL. But it would not matter if not all people could learn to use it. Let me elaborate a bit. Why is it so important that everyone (every Web user?) can use XSL? Should every web designer be able to: - Write a consistent web of documents - design an attractive look for these documents when displayed online - design the proper navigation means so that any reader can travel through the web and find and access the information they need - maintain the documents in XML source - create the necessary images in a drawing application - create the means to generate the web of documents as designed, complete with layout and navigational features (for example, an XSL stylesheet) I think it would be hard to come by such (Renaissansistic) people. What's wrong with having a team of people who complement each other if you want to do professional electronic publishing, to the Web or otherwise? I'm off to enjoy my weekend now - nice talking to you!\ Linda -----Original Message----- From: Miles Sabin [mailto:msabin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, May 28, 1999 3:15 PM To: 'xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' Cc: Nathan Langley Subject: RE: Leventhal's challenge misses the point Linda van den Brink wrote, > Maybe the solution there is to have teams of > specialists who do visual design and specialists who > take care of publication of (textual/other) source > adhering to this design. I've seen people who draw > their entire visual design of a web page in for > example paint shop pro, and then show this to a web > programmer who actually creates it for them. There's a couple of ways I can interpret this statement: 1. It doesn't matter if non-programmers can't use XSL: they were never the intended constituency anyway. or, 2. It does matter if non-programmers can't use XSL. Maybe they won't be able to (which is a shame), but there are workarounds. Either way, I think it's a bit of a problem. In fact, I think we're getting quite close to what I think is the chief defect of XSL. Despite what's said about it, it doesn't really separate data-model from presentation all that well ... that's why we'll probably end up with your scenario of designers using drawing packages and having to hand them over to programmers to implement. XML/XSL is a model-view type architecture. MV is good at breaking the dependency of data-models on presentation issues. Unfortunately it's very poor at separating presentation issues from the data model. That territory is handled quite nicely by the model-view-controller architecture: a data-model, a presentation model, and something which coordinates between the two. Translating that into the XML space we'd have something like: an XML data model (as now), an XML presentation model (maybe a skeletal FO document), and something that binds the two together (effectively an imperative script). Application programmers would focus on the data-model; designers would focus on the presentation model (supported by visual tools); and the glue would be done by a completely separate group ... perhaps they'd have to be programmer-designers, perhaps just programmers. Anyhow the upshot would be a clean separation of concerns and skill-sets. Cheers, Miles -- Miles Sabin Cromwell Media Internet Systems Architect 5/6 Glenthorne Mews +44 (0)181 410 2230 London, W6 0LJ msabin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx England XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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