Re: efficient filtering of XML files. ( XML!=content && XSLT!=presentation )?

Subject: Re: efficient filtering of XML files. ( XML!=content && XSLT!=presentation )?
From: Dan Morrison <dman@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2000 17:31:18 +1200
Mike Brown wrote:
> 
> 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.

Personally I've been a stickler for Content & Presentation being
abstracted from each other as much as possible, and generally add
Logic/Navigation as a third independant entity.

While I agree that hand-coding tiny variations is bad, I've been
achieving results using XSL layout 'libraries' and xsl:include, so only
the unique bits end up in a new file.

But how does this miss the point? As I see it, the alternative is to
'contaminate' the XSL with lots of conditionals. Now that's messy. (
It's how I started :-) )

Nahraharis "100 times" seems to require a re-think tho, If I understand
this means 100 unique XSLs!

Does anyone have pointers on the genuine design patterns of using XSLT? 
So far there's a couple of dozen HOWTOs, but a poor selection of WHENTOs
and only some abstract WHYTOs.
We know that XML+XSL=Presentation of Data, we know that
XML+XSL[2]=Alternative Presentation of Data. Has anyone got a resource
on the thinking behind how to glue this together?

This is EXACTLY what I'm working on now, and would love to find some
prior art...

.dan.

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