Re: [xsl] formal XSLT education (was Re: _why_ do people...)

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:38 PM 9/5/01, Mike wrote:
> So I guess I am a bit conflicted as to the best way to steer people when
> introducing them to XSLT. Is it better to start with a clean slate and
> explain it all from the ground up, or do you make some assumptions about
> what they already know and put effort into leading them from "the way you'd
> think it would be done" to "the way it really gets done"?

Again, I don't want to speak for Debbie, but I think we lean towards the 
"clean slate" approach. This is partly because we actually get students who 
don't have a procedural or even a web background, on whom those particular 
assumptions are lost. Interestingly, these students often turn out to have 
a remarkable facility with the language.

(It'll be interesting if XSL-FO brings in a whole new class of users from 
the off line publication world.)

Experience does show that however you get there, a firm grasp of (a) 
template-based processing and (b) the ins-and-outs of XPath, together 
provide a good foundation for almost any use case. The most frustration 
I've seen from self-taught users has been either because they didn't 
understand templates (including those helpful but sometimes pesky built-in 
templates), or because they were trying to use XPath without really knowing 
how it works.

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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