Re: [xsl] design ideas? exploiting variables

[Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Kay wrote:
> > So, my current code is oriented towards xhtml output.  But I 
> > want to be 
> > able to write simple simple output drivers for other formats 
> > that just 
> > takes the content in the formatted-biblist variable (which is just 
> > xhtml) and transforms it (into, for example, TeX or WordML).
>
>
> There's an interesting design choice that has to be made between using a
> single-stylesheet pipeline and a multi-stylesheet pipeline. Generally, the
> more complex things get, the more benefits there are in using a
> multi-stylesheet pipeline, where the transformation is broken up into a
> sequence of small transformations each done by its own stylesheet. The
> problem with this approach is that you need to write code in another
> language to control the pipeline flow. There are pipeline languages that do
> this (XPipe, Orbeon), or you can do it in Java, but it's another bit of
> technology to add to the mix.
>
> Once you've got a pipeline of more than one stylesheet, and a decent control
> engine for coordinating them, you tend to find that the individual
> stylesheets become smaller and smaller, and more and more reusable. Until
> you get to that point, you tend to construct a single-stylesheet pipeline in
> which variables are used to hold the results of successive transformation
> phases: and the stylesheet gradually gets more and more complex.
>
> I don't know what the right answer is for you - I'm just trying to clarify
> your options.
>
> Have other people experienced the same dilemma?


Wouldn't a simple solution (in a java servlet container environment) be 
to use a servlet that is mapped to a file type (based on the extension). 
Given base XHTML files and a request for *.rss, for example, you could 
get the corresponding XHTML file and transform it to the RSS structure.

best,
-Rob


> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/