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

[James Fuller <jim.fuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

andrew welch wrote:
> 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.

completely echo this statement,

I was skeptical during the early speccing/development of XSLT 2.0 esp 
with dependency on XML Schema, etc..

The stuff I dont like thankfully stays out of one's way enough; though 
there are still some non-intuitive type castings...it really isnt a 
problem compared with some of the black magic we perform in XSLT 1.0.

All in all I feel that XSLT 2.0 has removed all the voodoo (grouping 
anyone) that we had to do in XSLT 1.0 and given some very expressive and 
powerful mechanisms with which to get real work done.

I think that it must be a record for a v1 and v2 of a specification to 
get things so right; congrats to all who made it possible.

Now all we need is microsoft to push getting a XSLT 2.0 built and 
integrated with their browser/.NET platform; then we would be cooking 
with gas.

cheers, Jim Fuller