Re: html fragments

[Mike Brown <mike at skew dot org>]

> I want to construct a well-formed html document using a poorly formed
> html fragment at the top, a poorly formed but complementary html
> fragment at the bottom, and a well-formed html fragment in the middle.
> 
> Can I do this?

XSLT is not the tool for this job. Generating output as a series of
pasted-together text is something that ASP, PHP, CFML, etc are better
suited for.

It is disappointing that XSLT documentation, including the new tutorial
at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/0800/XSLT/XSLT.asp, tends
not to emphasize that XSLT operates on abstract node trees rather than
physical documents.

The physical stylesheets and the input and output are a layer removed
from what is actually going on, but one is led to believe that the
stylesheet is a literal specification for the desired output, and
further, that the stylesheet is intepreted directly, rather than being
a well-formed representation of an abstract tree, itself.

You will need to redefine your problem if you intend to use XSLT,
although someone will surely suggest very inelegant workarounds
involving the creation of text-oriented trees riddled with
disable-output-escaping flags.

-Mike


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