RE: [xsl] Reading value of passed variable

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:42 PM 6/17/2004, Deirdre wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Josh Canfield wrote:
>
> > I imagine it has more to do with the OP either not looking, or not
> > understanding what they are looking for.
>
> The hardest thing when learning something quite alien is the latter. You
> don't yet have the vocabulary to perform the search.

This paradox has been referred to in Philosophy as the "hermeneutic 
circle". This is its down side: to learn something, you have to know 
something, etc. An upward motion could be called "bootstrapping". The 
learning curve is a spiral staircase.

To help with this, societies of learning develop dogmas, teaching tales and 
mantras, which newbies are instructed in even before they see the light of 
understanding. "XSLT works on the tree, not on text: nodes are not tags." 
"You can't compose expressions on the fly" (these were an example of that 
-- you have to use a stylesheet to generate a stylesheet, or an eval() 
extension).

Cheers,
Wendell

___&&__&_&___&_&__&&&__&_&__&__&&____&&_&___&__&_&&_____&__&__&&_____&_&&_
    "Thus I make my own use of the telegraph, without consulting
     the directors, like the sparrows, which I perceive use it
     extensively for a perch." -- Thoreau