RE: RE: [xsl] How to get output XML same as input XML?

["Josh Hone" <icsad@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello -

> XSLT is a language that takes a tree of nodes as input and produces a
> tree of nodes as output. If that's not what you want to do, then don't
> use XSLT. If you think of XSLT as a language that takes source XML
> (pointy brackets) as input and produces pointy brackets as output, then
> you are never going to become a proficient user of the language.

I simply want to use it for other than common purposes.  As has been stated 
previously, I have already solved my problem and require no further help on 
this issue.  I was simply trying to illustrate my app so that people can see 
how I am using XSL.  I am only saying that xsl:copy does not produce valid 
output with my certain set of requirements in my Xalan installation, as can 
be seen by following the links in my earlier emails.  Text output method 
will not output anything that looks like XML, whether it is created as such 
by simple typing of an element in the stylesheet or with xsl:element, and so 
creating angle brackets in the output or escaping their characters simply 
did not do the job.

> Several people have told you this already and you are fighting against
> the advice. But they are right.

I want to stress that I am fully appreciative of the advice given.  However, 
not everyone really cares what the valid rules are for creating XML and XSL. 
 In particular, people who need to use applications by writing XML but who 
only really care about what the XML is trying to convey, not what its many 
rules are, need templates which will help them convey their information.  
HTML did the same thing, and it's hard to imagine workarounds for XML are 
not right around the corner since it lowers the barriers to entry in using 
these technologies.

My application is meant to be used by scientists who want to deploy compute 
and data grid applications for remote heavy-resource utilization.  They have 
to write XML, Schemas, and stylesheets in order for the system to work, but 
the fact that they have to learn essentially three new languages is 
extremely burdensome, especially for non-CS researchers, so I am trying to 
make their job easier.  In this case I am simply writing a stylesheet which 
creates a Perl script which can call other scripts that the scientists 
write, passing the scientist script a simple informative XML document.  Many 
have found writing stylesheets takes more time than they have to learn, but 
since they are experienced programmers in other languages like Perl, the 
Perl+XML combo is very useful to them.  I just don't believe that if they 
know Perl+XML, they should also have to know XSL.

As you so colorfully put it, I am only trying to get the correct text to 
appear in my output.  I don't know why you assume that this is because I do 
not have an understanding of the language.  This was in fact done because my 
users do not have the required time to spend to fully understand XML as 
"nodes", and there is no reason why I can't ask for help to make things 
easier on them.  They have the freedom to fully utilize XSL if they wish, 
but mostly a need to simply get things done quickly, since they, as most 
people do, have people to which they must expose working results.  A simple 
understanding of XML as ordered (or marked-up) text should suffice.

In fact, the paralysis associated with that viewpoint is exactly what the 
scientists have been irked with me about.  They don't like the time I 
usually take to write a Schema to fully describe some set of information, 
for example, when a more general Schema will suffice.  The service that the 
app can provide is all that is focused on, and it has helped us to cultivate 
a quickly growing interested set of users who might have been turned off 
otherwise.

Josh Hone

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