RE: First experiences with XSL

Istvan Cseri (istvanc@microsoft.com)
Fri, 30 Jan 1998 09:56:40 -0800

Thanks for the feedback, I hope we don't hit this brick wall you mention
with XSL. First of all it is an extendable language so we can add more
functionality to the language itself easily. Second, we can extend the set
of flow objects to provide more functionality. Third, we have the escape to
JavaScript where you can program advanced functionality yourself. JavaScript
is of course not as fast as Java so this is a limited option.

Istvan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Kay [SMTP:M.H.Kay@eng.icl.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, January 30, 1998 9:25 AM
> To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: First experiences with XSL
>
>
>
> >The goal is of course to create something reusable, instead of everybody
> >writing their own favorite and incompatible processors. An other goal is
> to
> >let non-programmers take advantage of a style sheet language. An other
> goal
> >is to keep the language as declarative as possible so if you want to
> >effeciently re-generate PART of the output again because the source XML
> >document or XSL style sheet changed you can do this.
> >
> >No argument here that the current XSL processor is limited. We are
> working
> >on it (as I assume a couple of other companies). Does this answer your
> >question ?
> >
> My posting wasn't intended to be negative, merely to report early
> experience
> to provide feedback, which is surely necessary if these goals are to be
> accomplished.
>
> My expectation was that XSL would be rather like a report writer: much
> quicker
> than programming to achieve simple tasks, but limited in capability.
> Report
> writers have always had this "brick wall" problem: when a simple report
> gets
> more and more complex, you have to switch technology and start again. But
> my experience, which I wanted to report, was that I could define a general
> and reusable framework in which programming simple reports in Java was
> just as easy as programming them in XSL, without the brick wall problem.
>
> If XSL can be turned into a tool for non-programmers, then it will
> certainly
> serve a useful purpose. I don't think it's there yet, but I wish the
> endeavour
> well.
>
> regards, Mike Kay
>
>
>
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