Subject: [xsl] Re: <?XSL?> - Oh what a tangled web w3 weave :) From: Arved Sandstrom <Arved_37@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 10:53:07 -0400 |
On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 04:52:21 EST, Andre Watt wrote: <quote> 1. Confine the generic term "XSL" to situations which refer to XSLFO _and_ XSLT collectively. 2. When referring to XSL Formatting Objects the abbreviation to be used should be either "XSL-FO" or "XSLFO". 3. When referring to XSL Transformations the abbreviation used should be "XSL-T" or "XSLT". 4. It should be recognised that there are two "XSL Namespaces". The XSLT Namespace is http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform. The XSL-FO Namespace is http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format. 5. The confusing "indicative prefix" (my term) for those two namespaces should be corrected/made consistent. I would suggest that the XSLT namespace use the "indicative prefix" of "xslt" rather than "xsl" i.e. the present <xsl:stylesheet> element would become <xslt:stylesheet>. Similarly the "fo" indicative prefix would become "xslfo" i.e. <fo:root> would become <xslfo:root>. </quote> Agreed on all counts. Furthermore, I would personally argue for more consistent use of the word "stylesheet". Reading the specs one senses that there are 2 kinds of stylesheet - a generalized XSLT stylesheet that can produce anything when it is applied, and an XSL (XSLT + XSLFO) stylesheet that produces XSLFO when it is applied. And I think the term "stylesheet" is used in the first instance because nobody has thought of anything better. Still, if a stylesheet is used in a middleware application to condition data, is that "styling"? I think not. I have no good suggestions for what to call a general XML document using the XSLT namespace and _any_ result namespaces. I suspect a lot of general users think a stylesheet is involved if one gets visual output by applying XSLT to some XML to produce HTML or WML, so the waters are already badly muddied. In fact, I'd argue that even if the XSLT "thing" is producing an HTML+CSS result, it's still not an XSLT stylesheet...XSLT is doing no styling, CSS is. I think, but cannot prove, that the use of the word "stylesheet" in XSLT (hence <xsl:stylesheet>) started early enough in the spec process that folks were often thinking XSLT + XSLFO (that is, "XSL"), not just XSLT. Particularly if the spec people were mostly "document-centric". Now of course the data side of XML has really exploded, and XSLT is being used in ways that I believe were not originally anticipated, or just weren't that prominent on the radar. The terminology doesn't reflect that shift, though. Me, I think I'll just start calling an XSLT "thing" a "program". :-) If the result of an XSLT program is XSLFO then I'll call it a stylesheet. Regards, Arved Sandstrom Fairly Senior Software Type e-plicity (http://www.e-plicity.com) Wireless * B2B * J2EE * XML --- Halifax, Nova Scotia XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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