Re: [xsl] Shorthand.

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve wrote:
> Oh believe me nobody is more aware of the limitations of XSL 1.0 than
> I am. However, I'm not going to move my web application from Classic
> ASP to .NET to use Saxon (much as I despise 1.0).

If you despise it, why are you using it? In the code you showed, there 
is no reason to use XSLT as all you are doing is using it as a 
procedural language and you can better do that with ASP (which already 
is procedural, whereas xslt is declarative).

Good time to upgrade, though: ASP (before .net) is age-old and not 
particularly suited for building web pages anymore, and definitely not 
RIAs (which you seem to build) and MS is planning (or already did?) to 
stop support for it. (but this matter may bring us far off-topic, for 
many it is all a matter of taste anyway).

> Yeah, my template works perfectly fine but I was just hoping for
> something more akin a 1.0 version of Angela's 2.0 solution, for pure
> style and type-ability reasons. If I could just magically go:
>
> <xsl:ajaxLink link='Click Me' href='process.asp' />
>
> I'd be thrilled!

That's good. Lookup a couple of templates from FXSL, it demonstrates 
many techniques, among one the sell-referencing method, where you use 
your own namespace for your own extensions, something along the lines of:

<xsl:stylesheet
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
    xmlns:ajax="http://ajax";
    extension-element-prefixes="ajax"
    >

   <ajax:link link='Click Me' href='process.asp' />

   <xsl:template match="/">
      <xsl:copy-of select="document("")/*/ajax:link" />
   </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

will output your ajax link.

But if all you care about is having an LRE, you don't need this 
complexity, nor a call-template, nor apply-templates. Just write it as 
an LRE, period (but here we are, back to the original question I asked 
you: we need to understand your situation better to really help you).



> I can't really use apply-templates (a la Grand Mr. Welch) because I'm
> not transforming links with XSL, I'm generating them.
Still hoping for a context explanation from you, I haven't seen any 
reason in your code why you need xsl:call-templates. "Generating them" 
says as much to me as it would when you explain what exactly you are 
doing with ASP and you tell me "generating web pages". I am under the 
impression that you are taking the wrong approach and I would like to 
help you with it, but you're not making it easy. Whether you use 
apply-templates or call-template, has nothing to do with 'transforming 
links' either, I wouldn't have a clue of what that could mean (xslt for 
one cannot transform links, it can only transform an input tree of nodes).

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma