RE: [xsl] How to mark every 5th output record.

Subject: RE: [xsl] How to mark every 5th output record.
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:05:10 -0400
Patrick,

At 11:30 AM 3/11/2008, you wrote:
In retrospect it would have been a lot easier to do it in C++, especially
since we have access to the source code of the application that exports the
XML. The choice to use XSLT was chosen as a stress test to validate the XML
schema and to prove to third parties that they could use XSLT to implement
their own file converters.  In other words: "If we can export to *that*
format using XSLT, then our customers can export to any file format".

That's interesting. In view of the fact that other considerations were put ahead of technical ones, one shouldn't be surprised to see a price being paid on the technical side.


Regarding your defense of XSLT, I'm not trying to force xslt to do something
it wasn't designed to do. I'm simply trying to find the path of least
resistance to accomplish that last 0.05% to meet spec compliance.

Well, maybe, but even without knowing any of the details, the running consensus is "this sounds like a job for XSLT 2.0". Nor do I doubt that a clean implementation would be possible even in XSLT 1.0 -- if you're willing to run the optimum number of passes (which might be more than two but probably isn't more than three). Part of the reason pipelining is an approved methodology is that it simplifies so much, even while it looks cumbersome up front (as someone suggested: Andrew?).


Then too, it seems like the industry must have been gasping for an openly-specified general-purpose transformation technology back in the early 2000s, given how much weight XSLT 1.0 has been asked to pull over the years.

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 ======================================================================

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