RE: [xsl] XSL and HTML

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

Alia,

To what Mike says, I'd add the question, why do you find

> > The fact
> > is I needed to do an XSL file for each page even if the
> > display is the
> > same but because the contents is changing.

This makes me wonder what your approach to XSL coding is. If your XML 
source conforms to a single tag set, and your display is the same, why do 
you find that you have to write a stylesheet for each page? Another way of 
asking this: what is changing in your contents that requires rewriting your 
XSL?

Either your scenario is different from the one for which XML/XSLT is 
designed (range of inputs conforming to known tag set; one stylesheet for 
the lot to target any given format), or you just don't know how to write 
portable XSLT.

The latter might be the case, for example, if you don't understand how to 
use the "push" processing model (are you using lots of xsl:for-eaches and 
conditional tests, but not many templates?), and your source has variable 
structures (as is not uncommon for documentary data). That might result in 
very brittle XSLT that has to be retuned for every page.

Not that this is likely -- in your case, since your XML is coming out of a 
database -- but either way, you might find that whatever is changing in 
your source (that seems to require a change in your stylesheet) could be 
parameterized or otherwise handled with some smart code. But we'd have to 
see more detail to be able to say.

So please explain a bit more -- maybe with a code sample -- if you really 
want to know why you aren't getting the savings in work that other XSL 
developers are.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 06:30 AM 3/20/2002, Mike wrote:
>XSLT will only give you savings in effort if it enables you to apply one
>stylesheet to many different pages of your web site. If you're going to
>write a different stylesheet for each page in your site, you might as well
>have written the page in HTML in the first place.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> >
> > Hi everybody,
> > I want to ask a question (maybe a silly one) about XSL and
> > HTML. I've got
> > a well-formed, valid XML-file (exported file from a database
> > with ASP). I
> > used XSL and ASP to get HTML pages for a design of a web
> > site. The fact
> > is I needed to do an XSL file for each page even if the
> > display is the
> > same but because the contents is changing. I used XML/XSL
> > technology to
> > reduce the work. But I found out it didn't! Is it because
> > this technology
> > is for other applications more complicated than a simple web design?
> > Thx a lot
> > Alia


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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