[xsl] XSLamenT

[Justin Johansson <procode@xxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day all,

It was not so long ago that one well-known participant of this list lamented:

"There is nothing so powerful in FXSL and it implements some most basic
concepts.

Concepts like: fold, map, compose, repeat/iterate   -- form the alphabet of
programming.

Certainly, if someone has arrived at grade 5 in school and still doesn't
know the alphabet,
this person will find reading even ordinary text rather "daunting".

To summarize, FXSL provides a big potential to learn, requires learning,
and this is even
a bigger value than simply the provided functionality."

This was in response to the remark by another well-known xsl-list participant:

" FXSL, unfortunately, is so powerful that I think many "ordinary" users find
it (FXSL) rather daunting.  A gentler introduction, using examples from the
world of
commercial IT systems rather than computer science, would help to sell it to
the general public."

Going by the last few days messages, it seems to this, yet another humble
lowercase, xslter,
that the "general public" cannot even get their heads around
xsl:apply-templates, let
around the fold, map, compose, repeat/iterate alphabet of FXSL.

Now that is not the fault of the W3C or the various Drs. and other learned
participants
of the xsl-list, but, it does seem to me that somehow the XSLT meme* is not
replicating
as we would all hope for in the minds of the wider I.T. community.

Is the XSLT community somehow just wanting to keep this good oil to itself,
or is it
failing to articulate the paradigm in common language?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme


>This is exactly what apply-templates is for. Whenever you see code along the
>lines
>
><xsl:choose>
>  <xsl:when test="name()='foo'">
>
>you should replace it by a call on apply-templates and a set of template
>rules for the different branches, in a special mode if necessary.
>
>Michael Kay
>http://www.saxonica.com/ 


Justin J