Re: XSLT vs Omnimark

[James Robertson <jamesr at steptwo dot com dot au>]

At 07:55 4/03/2000 , Vincent Bernat wrote:

>I don't know if some of you know Omnimark. It is a streaming
>programming language and it works like XSLT but allows to include
>programming instructions and can react to many more events (others than
>tags).
>I want to make use of one of this technology to process an XML file. Do
>someone know some pros and cons of both "products" to help me to make a
>choice ?

Well, from where I stand:

* XSLT is becomming pretty common, so many
   people understand it.

* Omnimark is much more powerful, and extensible.

* Omnimark has regular expressions, which are vital
   for almost all real-world work. It also has
   much cleaner handling of multiple files, data
   structures, etc.

* Both have strange, bizzare syntaxes.

* Both are free.

* XSLT has better support for XML (Omnimark
   is primarily an SGML tool). Omnimark is
   improving in this area, though.

* Omnimark primarily works on valid documents
   (ie the ones with DTDs). XSLT works well on
   well-formed documents as well as valid ones.

* Both can be extended using external functions,
   in a variety of languages.

* Omnimark is streaming, and very fast. It doesn't
   require 40meg of ram for a 50kb document (see
   earlier message re: XSLT).

* Omnimark can easily handle 100+ meg documents
   without requiring unreasonable amounts of RAM.

Personally, I use Omnimark, because I want
to get the job done with a minimum of hassle.

And simple user requirements get steadily
more complex as time goes on, so I want a tool
that has plenty of power, and few limitations.

I would recommend trying both.

Your biggest problem is that both tools have
a steep learning curve.

Cheers,

J

-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
SGML, XML & HTML Consultancy
Illumination: an out-of-the-box Intranet solution

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr@steptwo.com.au


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