RE: [xsl] XSL - Transforming 2 XSL stylesheets from 1 XML file

Subject: RE: [xsl] XSL - Transforming 2 XSL stylesheets from 1 XML file
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 12:33:18 -0400
At 12:03 PM 5/5/2005, Andrew wrote:
It certainly is wrong - it's an awful idea. Offloading work from the server to the client is a good idea (but still debatable), but achieving that through embedding links to the stylesheet in the XML is just wrong - it ties that XML to that stylesheet forever more. It's hardly been a success story has it? What's needed is a far more flexible approach.

Actually this is a "glass half-empty" argument (or quarter-empty or whatever :-). While <?xml-stylesheet?> doesn't hold up enough to wear outdoors (sorry to switch metaphors on you), it's worth recalling that without it browsers would have had no officially-sanctioned or even partially-portable way to invoke XSLT to run in the client, if for no one other than us developer-types. (A single PI is easy to drop in there, avoiding all script-fussiness.) Given that XSLT 1.0 was designed with the client in mind (we can leave aside the debate over where a transformation layer "belongs"), not only was it politically and culturally a Good Thing that we have had (more or less sort of) a single way to do this -- arguably it helped "save face" while XML/XSLT went on to prove just how valuable and useful it is in general and not just on the client.


I use them on my local system, but not always, and I expect them to break frequently (so it's nice the thing is as innocuous as a PI); nor to I rely on them for any kind of "publication".

I agree that long-term we're going to need stronger and better standards for the client, or client-side XSLT is just not going to prove feasible outside of intranets. A many-to-many relation between source documents and stylesheets is part of the whole idea.

Cheers,
Wendell


====================================================================== 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================

Current Thread