RE: [xsl] Critique/comments sought: XML/XSLT website documentation project

["Jim Fuller" <jim.fuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

yes, I admit that there are few 'authoratative' xml schemas for website.....just goes to show you that something that intuitively makes sense may not be all that logical, maybe its more a statement about how easy it is to do using xml and xslt.

as for your other question, I find that website modularity is easy to achieve by using xsl:import or xsl:include, put all your 'std' template definitions there, then inherit this into your page xslt, the page instantiates the render that you want, and when you want specific customisation at the page level then you can do it in the page, of course you still retain the benefit of globally changing a std templates behavior via edit of the global stylesheet. 

this type of thing may lead you to embark on creating libraries of xslt templates, etc.... . I would suggest the moment things start getting complex to look into XSLT 2.0, as well as add a framework approach...e.g. use some overarching controller software from SAX / DOM / JAXP, Cocoon, AxKit, serverside XSLT to even using Ant to control the XSLT processor this will let your xslt to do its primary job...that of transforming one xml format into another, instead of abusing xslt. Though abusing xslt is fun as well.

good luck, jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Sumption [mailto:dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 18 September 2003 12:48
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [xsl] Critique/comments sought: XML/XSLT website
documentation project


> Possibly you could benefit by reusing existing xml 
> vocabularies, instead of cooking up your own, when it comes 
> to creating websites there has been many approaches from the 
> old Docbook web dtd's to customizing XHTML via modularisation 
> www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-m12n-schema/. In addition, the Apache 
> Cocoon effort has a few standard approaches of building 
> websites with xml/xslt.....

Wouldn't you just know it... I assumed that, given that 90% of people
creating XML are also creating websites, there should be something like
this out there, but despite an exhaustive (well, 10 minutes or so)
search, I couldn't find any schema or DTDs describing websites. But,
like you say, it was certainly good exercise rolling my own.

Thanks for the other tips Jim. One question:

> - make the concept of webpage a one to one mapping, each xml  
> / xslt should be considered a web page, instead of putting it 
> on a template basis, will make sense later on.

Do you mean that, instead of one XML file detailing everything on the
website, I should use a collection of XML files, one per page? At first
I couldn't understand why this will make sense later on, but I guess
perhaps you mean if I choose to actually build the website using the XML
as a data-source? I had thought partway this far - that I could spit out
skeleton HTML files based on these definitions - but I think my head
would spin if started trying to get every aspect of the final website
into the XML files. Then again, yes, perhaps it will make sense _much_
later on :)

Dan


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