Re: [xsl] A beef with XSLT Sometimes too complicated

["andrew welch" <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/14/06, Nic James Ferrier <nferrier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> >> Is there a cleaner / simpler way to do this?  Any chance you can do
> >> this in one line?
> >
> > In xslt2:
> >
> > <xsl:variable name="bg_img" select="if(normalize-space($all_vars))
> >  then 'background_bright' else 'background_faded'"/>
>
> I hate the idea of 2 'if's in a language.

I disliked it too when I first saw it... It always looks a complete
mess to the untrained eye, possibly because traditional indentation is
not usually applied, possibly because double quotes get split over
multiple lines.

However once you've used a few if-then-else's and a couple
for-in-return's you quickly learn to love them and life without them
just seems so long winded, as pointed out by the OP with a
choose-when-otherwise in a variable.

There are many great features of 2.0, and this is definitely one of them, IMHO.