Re: [xsl] Rescuing XSLT from Niche Status

["Jacobs,David B." <djacobs at mitre dot org>]

> I can see it's useful if pulling bits of data out of databases etc
> (which is one main use of the ASP on the web pages here, as a matter
> of fact) Where almost the entire page is static and you just want to
> "fill in the blanks".

Ah, this hits upon what is probably a crucial difference in perspective.  I
definitely see an XML document as more of a mini-database/ data structure
than a "document" that needs to be presented.  This probably comes from my
orientation towards building web applications /components, as opposed to
having a large document repository which I can search over, retrieve and
display matching documents.

In fact for that reason, and I should probably change the paper to reflect
this, I see extracting information from multiple XML documents as one of the
core capabilities users should learn early on.

> But if you are converting a document format of any complexity down to
> HTML (for example) the template rule driven approach is far more natural
> and easier to code in XSLT as the output is driven by the input, you
> don't need to sketch out the entire format of the document; If you come
> across a list in the input, convert it to an HTML list, and carry on
> etc..

Unless the style of an element depends on which part of the new document it
is in.  Then the intuitiveness goes out the window, at least for the
beginner (IMHO).

David



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