[xsl] Q: to Jeni Tennison regarding your APress titles...

["M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeni,

I just came back from running a few late night errands, the first of 
which was my daily (or semi-daily depending on the day) trip to the 
local Barnes & Noble (what has become my metaphorical candy story as the 
years have passed.)  One of the things I have come to both enjoy and 
find to be a near absolute necessity to keep my mind and as such my 
hackers creativity fresh is to seek out titles on subjects that would 
never occur to me to search for on Amazon or B&N Online.  While some of 
them turn out to be complete junk others turn out to be amazing gems 
that inspire my development by giving me new ways (well, new to me) to 
think about the same problems.

Tonight turned out to be slightly different as I came across a copy of 
your Beginning XSLT from APress released last March.  About a month or 
two ago I had gone into the same store but unfortunately they didn't 
have anything in stock (I see this as a good thing as a book not in 
stock, especially in your case, means a copy has been sold :)  I was 
surprised to find though that what I thought was a 2.0 title was 
actually a 1.0 title.  I could had sworn I had seen a copy of a 2.0 
title of yours a few months back but in returning home and looking 
online it seems the 2.0 title is not due out for another month or two.  
I had decided a while back (in fact I think I mentioned it in a post) 
that although Dr. Kay's book -- now books -- had become my staple for 
XSLT reference your teaching style of progressive understanding was 
something very unique and was something that had helped me a lot 
throughout the years to gain a deeper understanding of things in a way I 
doubt I could have learned from anybody else. 

I realize that the title of the book was not something I would normally 
even consider as worthwhile of my dollars and time -- and if it was any 
other author I feel safe in saying theres no way that book would have 
gone into my basket.  But given the many, many times your posts have 
opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things I decided that today I 
would consider myself a beginner and as such start back at the beginning 
with a resource bound to help sharpen the saw and fine tune the skill set.

So, here is my question: 
   - Given a student with:
        - many years of hard core, production XSLT experience,
        - who has dug deep into the insides of the Saxon 8.x-B 
processor to port it to the .NET platform,
        - and someone who contributes to this list from an experts 
standpoint on a regular basis

What would your advice be on using your Beginning XSLT title as an 
instrument to sharpen and fine tune my skill sets as such that, in the 
end, I will be a better XSLT programmer because of the effort put forth?
       - Are there specifics areas in which you feel a lot of so-called 
"experts" tend to miss the boat in how they understand something or 
approach particular problems?
       - Are there portions of XSLT 1.0 that are rarely used in 
practice (and as such not well understood) that, if implemented 
correctly, could make my XSLT code cleaner, leaner, more efficient, 
easier to maintain, or easier to fine tune and/or debug?
       - And finally, leading up to your 2.0 release due out in a few 
months what areas of this title would you suggest as areas that will 
help me better understand (and therefore implement) the content you set 
forth in this upcoming title?  Or in other words, from your standpoint, 
what portion(s) of XSLT 1.0 is and will remain as the absolute core of 
XSLT from now until the end of the foreseeable XSLT future?

Don't get me wrong... I am not trying to suggest that after all this 
time I just don't get it and I feel I need to start back over at the 
beginning.  But I have come to believe that as soon as you feel that you 
have a full and complete understanding of something then its time to go 
back and start over at the beginning and figure out what it is that you 
missed along the way.  I have found that doing this type of exercise 
from time-to-time will do nothing less than give me a greater 
understanding and appreciation of a language and could potentially cause 
drastic increase in the my quality, effectiveness and productivity as I 
explore areas that I ignored for whatever reason along the way.

Thanks Jeni!  I don't expect for you to write in any sort of length (or 
at all for that matter) a response back to my questions.  But if you 
find the time to simply give me (and any of the rest of the community 
members who can see benefit from such an exercise) a few topics to focus 
on or a few chapters here and there to integrate into my day-to-day 
studies I would be more than appreciative!

Thank you for your time and efforts!  I very much look forward to 
digging into this title to discover new and interesting ways to look at 
XSLT and the problems in which it can help solve as well as to gain a 
deeper understanding of the foundation of this language I have come to 
love :)  I look forward to placing your title right next to MK's suite 
of references to use often in my development work!

Best regards,

<M:D/>