Re: efficient filtering of XML files.

[Mike Brown <mike@xxxxxxxx>]

> but what on earth is this? (or more exactly what's it doing in an XML
> related list!!)

After you remove the MIME encapsulation and quoted-printable (aka
quoted-unreadable) encoding for that part of the message, you'll see that
it's well-formed, namespace-aware XML embedded in an HTML document,
conveying MS Office 2000 specific formatting information via HTML comments
in a manner that doesn't affect how it is rendered by other user agents.

At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft apologist, it was done rather
well, considering the limitations of HTML, and the fact that it was
probably developed before XHTML became a recommendation. The only thing
technically wrong with it is probably the DOCTYPE which I'm sure it won't
validate against, given the presence of xmlns attributes in HTML elements.

Of course that's no excuse for posting it.

> In answer to your question, several systems offer the possibility to
> cache stylesheets, but it depends on the system, and how you are calling
> it.

Without knowing the problem that is being solved by the XML and XSL in
question, it's hard to say, but it could also be addressable by rethinking
part of the application design.

I've seen people make the mistake of thinking XML=content while
XSLT=presentation, and therefore they are not allowing any presentational
data to 'contaminate' their XML. They generate or hand-code many XSLT
documents with very slight variations in order to produce many slightly
different kinds of output, often custom-fitted to act on a specific piece
of XML. This approach misses the point of XSLT. I hope that's not what
he's doing.

   - Mike
___________________________________________________________
Mike J. Brown, software engineer, Webb Interactive Services
XML/XSL stuff: http://www.skew.org/    http://www.webb.net/


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