Kathy,
You aren't bothering the list with your stupidity. You are confused about
two or three things -- confusing things -- which is leading you to make
some ... "elementary" mistakes. But nothing irremediable.
My suspicion is that you're trying to apply the technology within a complex
layered system -- ASP and all that -- without having had a chance to break
your system down and learn the different parts separately.
For example, several mistakes you have come to us with have been in the
area of XML well-formedness rules. Why this works:
<xsl:apply-templates select="element[@att='value']"/>
but this gives you an error:
<xsl:apply-templates select="element[@att="value"]"/>
This isn't an XSLT error -- it's an XML error. But if you've never used XML
before (XSLT aside), you don't know it and you don't know the error, etc.
Yet to an experienced user of XML (who's used it in different contexts,
including without XSLT, ASP etc. etc.), it's grade-school stuff.
At 11:00 AM 7/1/2003, you wrote:
Please tell me where in your book (or any book!) it gives explanations or
examples of how to actually APPLY this stuff as PART of a program.
There are a couple of books that have one-chapter explanations of "systems"
soup-to -nuts, such as Wrox's "XML Applications" or "ASP XML". But these
frequently miss the mark, simply because people's design requirements are
just so various that it's often difficult to apply what they show to your
case. There is *one* set of well-formedness rules to XML, a single spec of
the XSLT language -- but many, many architectures that include them.
It's probably just as effective -- and in the long run, it'll keep you sane
-- to learn how the various different technologies work separately, and
only then see how people (and applications) are putting them together.
This doesn't require an expensive training course -- the knowledge is all
out there. But it does require time and patience ... particularly patience
with old schoolmasters who are frustrated that you weren't born knowing the
rules of Latin noun declension.
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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