RE: [xsl] Transform XML to XML

Subject: RE: [xsl] Transform XML to XML
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 10:27:47 -0400
Mike,

At 07:36 PM 8/25/2005, you wrote:
        -- XSLT : Programmer's Reference by Michael Kay
        -- XSLT and XPath On The Edge by Jeni Tennison
        -- XSLT Cookbook by Sal Mangano
        -- XPath and XPointer by John E. Simpson
        -- XSL-FO by Dave Pawson
        -- Definitive XSL-FO by G. Ken Holman
        -- XSL Formatting Objects Developer's Handbook by Doug Lovell

Ah. As it happens, none of these are "beginner" books.


-- XSLT : Programmer's Reference by Michael Kay

An excellent reference, but many don't take the trouble to read the text outside of the context of particular problem-solving. This is excellent stuff, but in the context of the whole (which is for experts as well as beginners) the processing model stuff might get lost. Nevertheless you should certainly take the time to see what it says about the default processing model, plus also the chapter on different kinds of stylesheets is excellent.


-- XSLT and XPath On The Edge by Jeni Tennison

Not a beginner's book; here Jeni mostly assumes you know the processing model (or perhaps you can learn it from a beginner's book such as Jeni's excellent "Beginning XSLT").


-- XSLT Cookbook by Sal Mangano

A recipe book, as its title indicates.


-- XPath and XPointer by John E. Simpson

An excellent book but not about XSLT, therefore not about the processing model.


        -- XSL-FO by Dave Pawson
        -- Definitive XSL-FO by G. Ken Holman
        -- XSL Formatting Objects Developer's Handbook by Doug Lovell

All are about FO, the target format for many XSLT transforms but in itself irrelevant to XSLT's processing model. (And you don't have to generate your FO with XSLT if you don't want. :-)


The others are at home.

You might alert us to those too. As it is, beyond Mike's coverage (and the big shortcoming of the Programmer's Reference is its index, so you'll have to dig: review his ToC!) you'll need to go on line or back to Amazon.


There's tons of stuff on line (including in the archives of this list) but it can be hard to find. In addition to googling, you might try

http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/N7654.html
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/pushpull.html

Of course these will help with terminology too, which makes searching easier.

>> It's not that the stuff is so difficult to understand: it's not. It's
just non-obvious, a bit tricky to explain in the midst of other
complications.

Well, as this comic I heard once said:

                "I told my buddy: 'You know, your sister's a really fat
slob!  Well, I don't mean that in a *baaad* way, ya know..."  :)

Yeah well you might be surprised how enchanting she really is.... :->


Cheers,
Wendell


====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================

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