Subject: RE: XSLT vs Omnimark From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:05:02 -0500 |
Hi Paul, Paul said: C) ... perl could be considered to be a rule-based language, like awk. Awk is a "rule-based language for streaming processing of documents". Right? So is perl ;-) Didier replies: It depends off course of your definition of rule based languages ;-) Let's then explain mine: a rule based language is a language where procedure or set of instruction are run when an external event occurs. These languages react to things. We can also say that a rule base language is also an event based language. Among rule based languages: a) CSS b) DSSSL c) XSLT e) Omnimark Paul said: .... You mean, there is something strange with Omnimark's ad? They are selling it as a 'better perl', that means in your terminology they are comparing oranges with potatoes. Didier replies: yes you are right this is what they are doing. Their real competitor is XSLT not PERL. But the marketing guys at Omnimark are quite slow on the switch :-)) Paul said: Aftre you's and Vincents postings I now think that both comparsions are legal. ( and it is not an offtopic here ;-) Omnimark vs XSLT and Omnimark vs Perl. Omnimarks grabs a bit from Perl and a bit from XSLT. Didier replies: To be fair I would say that yes the procedural part of Omnimark is remind PERL. But because Omnimark was there a long time before XSLT, we can say that XSLT grabs a bit from Omnimark (the rule/event based mechanism). Paul said: But it does it in 'perlish' way, lacking XSLT's conceptual beauty. That's what I meant saying that Omnimark is 'eclectic reincarnation of perl'. Didier replies: I do not follow you Paul. In which way Omnimark is lacking XSLT beauty since XSLT have the same underlying conceptual framework as Omnimark. I would say, however that the main advantage of XSLT compared to Omnimark is the presence of XPath in XSLT which is a better pattern matching expression that the one used by Omnimark. But if you looked closely to the example I gave in the last post you would see that they have the same conceptual framework. So the following construct: <xsl:template match="topic"> <p>this is topic</p> </xsl:template> is triggered the same way as: element topic output "<p>this is a topic</p>" There is no for or while construct here, just a rule declaration which is triggered by the pattern match mechanism. Moreover, Omnimark (and do not forget that Omnimark and DSSSL where the predecessors of XSLT and that this latter did not brought any novelty on this facet - only with XPath, the pattern match expression). It is then possible to modify, as well as with XSLT, the structure of the resultant document with: element topic output "<p>this is a %c topic</p>" the construct %c is equivalent to the <xsl:apply-templates/> construct. Thus, when the source tree is processed, the other rule matching the current processed nodes will have their output included where the %c is located as it is the case in XSLT actually with <xsl:apply-templates/> So, Paul, as you may notice now, Omnimark and XSLT are really close cousins, that Omnimark is closer to XSLT than to Perl and finally that Omnimark Marketing people are due for some training since their real enemy is not PERL but more XSLT. This is rational thought, but as we both know the market is not as rational and in terms of market share PERL is enormously bigger than the one of XSLT. We also both know that marketing guys are number driven and that market share is a indicator, for them, of who's the competitor not the technical features. But this is precisely these technical features, and the fact that modern browser includes or will includes XSLT that makes XSLT the worse competitor to Omnimark. They have an advantage compared to XSLT, their processor is tremendously faster than most XSLT processor written in Java. Probably the next generation written in C++ an more optimized than today's prototypes will bring sane competition and for us, at least, tools to transform our XML documents so that if I type in a browser's address box http:// my site.com/folder/myxmldoc.xml I get either an HTML doc if I am using a non XML aware browser and an XML document+xslt if I am using an XML aware user agent. Does anyone knows any site allowing that today? Cheers Didier PH Martin ---------------------------------------------- Email: martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Conferences: Web Chicago(http://www.mfweb.com) XML Europe (http://www.gca.org) Book: XML Professional (http://www.wrox.com) column: Style Matters (http://www.xml.com) Products: http://www.netfolder.com XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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