[xsl] Q: to Jeni Tennison regarding your APress titles...
Subject: [xsl] Q: to Jeni Tennison regarding your APress titles...
From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 02:06:41 -0800
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Hi Jeni,
I just came back from running a few late night errands, the first of
which was my daily (or semi-daily depending on the day) trip to the
local Barnes & Noble (what has become my metaphorical candy story as the
years have passed.) One of the things I have come to both enjoy and
find to be a near absolute necessity to keep my mind and as such my
hackers creativity fresh is to seek out titles on subjects that would
never occur to me to search for on Amazon or B&N Online. While some of
them turn out to be complete junk others turn out to be amazing gems
that inspire my development by giving me new ways (well, new to me) to
think about the same problems.
Tonight turned out to be slightly different as I came across a copy of
your Beginning XSLT from APress released last March. About a month or
two ago I had gone into the same store but unfortunately they didn't
have anything in stock (I see this as a good thing as a book not in
stock, especially in your case, means a copy has been sold :) I was
surprised to find though that what I thought was a 2.0 title was
actually a 1.0 title. I could had sworn I had seen a copy of a 2.0
title of yours a few months back but in returning home and looking
online it seems the 2.0 title is not due out for another month or two.
I had decided a while back (in fact I think I mentioned it in a post)
that although Dr. Kay's book -- now books -- had become my staple for
XSLT reference your teaching style of progressive understanding was
something very unique and was something that had helped me a lot
throughout the years to gain a deeper understanding of things in a way I
doubt I could have learned from anybody else.
I realize that the title of the book was not something I would normally
even consider as worthwhile of my dollars and time -- and if it was any
other author I feel safe in saying theres no way that book would have
gone into my basket. But given the many, many times your posts have
opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things I decided that today I
would consider myself a beginner and as such start back at the beginning
with a resource bound to help sharpen the saw and fine tune the skill set.
So, here is my question:
- Given a student with:
- many years of hard core, production XSLT experience,
- who has dug deep into the insides of the Saxon 8.x-B
processor to port it to the .NET platform,
- and someone who contributes to this list from an experts
standpoint on a regular basis
What would your advice be on using your Beginning XSLT title as an
instrument to sharpen and fine tune my skill sets as such that, in the
end, I will be a better XSLT programmer because of the effort put forth?
- Are there specifics areas in which you feel a lot of so-called
"experts" tend to miss the boat in how they understand something or
approach particular problems?
- Are there portions of XSLT 1.0 that are rarely used in
practice (and as such not well understood) that, if implemented
correctly, could make my XSLT code cleaner, leaner, more efficient,
easier to maintain, or easier to fine tune and/or debug?
- And finally, leading up to your 2.0 release due out in a few
months what areas of this title would you suggest as areas that will
help me better understand (and therefore implement) the content you set
forth in this upcoming title? Or in other words, from your standpoint,
what portion(s) of XSLT 1.0 is and will remain as the absolute core of
XSLT from now until the end of the foreseeable XSLT future?
Don't get me wrong... I am not trying to suggest that after all this
time I just don't get it and I feel I need to start back over at the
beginning. But I have come to believe that as soon as you feel that you
have a full and complete understanding of something then its time to go
back and start over at the beginning and figure out what it is that you
missed along the way. I have found that doing this type of exercise
from time-to-time will do nothing less than give me a greater
understanding and appreciation of a language and could potentially cause
drastic increase in the my quality, effectiveness and productivity as I
explore areas that I ignored for whatever reason along the way.
Thanks Jeni! I don't expect for you to write in any sort of length (or
at all for that matter) a response back to my questions. But if you
find the time to simply give me (and any of the rest of the community
members who can see benefit from such an exercise) a few topics to focus
on or a few chapters here and there to integrate into my day-to-day
studies I would be more than appreciative!
Thank you for your time and efforts! I very much look forward to
digging into this title to discover new and interesting ways to look at
XSLT and the problems in which it can help solve as well as to gain a
deeper understanding of the foundation of this language I have come to
love :) I look forward to placing your title right next to MK's suite
of references to use often in my development work!
Best regards,
<M:D/>