Re: Automatic Omnimark to XSLT conversion tool?

["Rick Geimer" <Rick.Geimer@xxxxxxx>]

"Pawson, David" wrote:
> 
> >I would therefore like to know whether the list knows of any
> >efforts of converting Omnimark scripts to equivalent
> >XSLT-scripts, in order to reduce the number of technologies we
> >use.
> 
> I suggest that an Omnimark script would be a good start?
> 
> Its more than capable of most types of transforms!
> 
> Rick G will probably come back with more detail :-)
> (The OM expert on this list)


Did somebody call me?

This would be rather difficult, unless you were very careful with the
creation of your OmniMark program. XSLT is a side-effect free language,
while OmniMark allows side effects (i.e. changing the values of
variables, etc). Plus, OmniMark has build-in regular expressions, which
XSLT lacks. Lastly, OmniMark is a streaming language, and thus tends to
handle large files better. If you took advantage of any of these
features in your programs, you can forget about any kind of easy
OmniMark to XSLT conversion.

Also, you said that OmniMark was used in an SGML publishing process.
XSLT only works with XML, and can only serialize to a subset of XML
(i.e. only the document tree itself). What you may find yourself having
to do is batch convert all your data to a simplified XML structure
first, then build your production chain around that new structure so
that you can use XSLT (which is why I stick with OmniMark for most
serious work...I'm not a big fan of tailoring the problem to fit the
solution). 

I've actually thought about doing the opposite (i.e. an XSLT to OmniMark
converter), but haven't had the time, and there probably isn't much real
benefit in this either.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help,

Rick Geimer
National Semiconductor
rick.geimer@xxxxxxx


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