RE: [TFUI] XML -> XSLT -> XHTML Nirvana

> From: Phlip [mailto:[email protected]] 
> 
> WebXP's Prime Directive is that all HTML in your browser must 
> come from
> XSLT, supplying markup, and XML, supplying data.

> Faced with a short schedule and long feature list, and face 
> with the absurd
> complexities required to code a lowly 'if' statement inside 
> XSLT, I move the
> 'if' statement up into the project that generates the XML.

So you're "feeling the pain" with XSLT. Does it have to be XSLT? There are
some substitutes which appear to serve the same purpose (transformation of
XML) without the verbosity:

 - http://xduce.sourceforge.net/

 - http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~mbs/pub/xmlambda/

 - http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/software/xml/
   (not sure about this, but it has a Python binding,
   so you'd probably write the transformation as a Python program)

 - http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/HaXml/
   (you'll have to learn Haskell - worthy in itself - so there's a barrier
to adoption)

I haven't tried any of these, so I can't vouch for them. There's an old
review of XMLLamda and HaXML (and ErXML) from a function programming
point-of-view here:
  http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/02/14/functional.html


That said, I assume you're aware that you can create functions in XSLT, so
you can reduce code duplication (and therefore some typing) with a simple
Extract Method refactoring. Of course, being XSLT, the volume of characters
you must type at the calling site to invoke the extracted function is still
outrageous.

I haven't read the book, so I don't know what else they get out of using
XSLT. You hinted at:
 - automated site map
 - (monolithic?) validation test (no broken links?)


Alistair.

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