[xsl] XSLT documentation

[Hoskins & Gretton <hoskgret@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:21:55 -0500
> To: "xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> From: Brian Newman <brian.newman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: XSLT documentation
> Message-ID: <A87B5F3921038447AE0BFF8B42C5C7FF1ACB925EA2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Have you ever been tasked to describe _graphically_ what a transform is doi=
> ng and, if so, how have you done it?

I would be interested in what you mean by "graphically" -- can you 
provide some details of the output format you want (i.e. HTML? SVG? 
Flash? PDF?) and what you think would visually represent the 
relationships between the XML and the result output. For example, you 
can probably generate SVG with text labels that represent the element 
or attribute being processed by a given template rule and what its 
output will be. But it might be a different exercise entirely to 
represent how a parameter passes through a set of templates.

For SVG, there seem to be plenty of interesting resources online 
(http://www.carto.net/svg/manipulating_svg_with_dom_ecmascript/, 
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-svgint/ 
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-create-svg-graphics-in-blogger.html 
http://www.kevlindev.com/tutorials/basics/text/js_dom/index.htm 
http://croczilla.com/bits_and_pieces/svg/samples/foreign1/foreign1.xml). 
Java can be used for non-SVG 
(http://surguy.net/articles/generating-graphics-with-xslt.xml) 
display on a web page. This site is interesting in regards to a 
dynamic approach http://www.tonymarston.net/xml-xsl/reusable-xsl.html 
(intended for data-like XML content to be displayed in forms).

I personally love the dynamic displays that some folks have set up to 
show examples of XSLT applied to XML, where one can make changes to 
the XSLT and see how it affects the output in a companion window on 
the web page 
http://www.webcontinuum.net/xml_xsltdemo.aspx#form_input1. At one of 
my previous jobs, we built an interactive browser-based interface for 
non-developers to understand the transforms we were writing and how 
the parameters that they provided would affect the result in JSP 
"widgets" on the website where they would be used commercially. As I 
no longer work for that company, I don't have the code for the 
display site to share. But the idea is to make a set of sample XML 
files that covers just about any condition you want to demonstrate, 
and provide a method to apply XSLT and display the result in real time.