RE: XSLT Documentation (Was: RE: How is this part of the XSLT specification to be interpreted?)

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

This is an interesting thread.

My comments in line. Thanks to Dave for starting to formalize this. Dave,
does this mean you are collecting a proposed features list? Are there any
formal requirements stipulated?

At 01:21 PM 6/22/00 +0100, DaveP wrote:
>Off the top of my head *some* of the key things to know about a stylesheet
>might be.

One might also want to know things about particular templates and about
particular constructions in templates. (Dave might have meant that.)

>1. 
>prime purpose of  a simple template
>e.g. Transforms element x into y/z
>
>2. Exception processing
>source document element a is processed within template for
>element b because....

Could be generalized to include explanations of conditional processing logic.

Conditional processing happens (at least) two ways: through template
matching (e.g match="p[@show='extralarge']") and through <xsl:if>/<xsl:choose>

>3. Use of global variables.
>E.g. variable $root holds the content of document(....)

Remember the logic of parameters and how/why they get passed, too.
And this folds into 1. when we start talking about fancy recursive templates.

>4. Interpretation of any special select patterns.
> E.g. this template selects all list items and does x.

Grouping/sorting logic could fall into this category.

I'm not sure there's a clear typing evident from these kinds of
explanations. There do seem to be levels of explanation -- explanations at
the stylesheet level, at the template level, within the template, and
perhaps of particular attribute values as well (such as funky select
attributes). I do think some clarification of requirements would help
direct a design.

Another question is how this tag structure should be validated. Clearly a
DTD isn't going to get far. Schematron?

Heh. This could be cool.

--Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
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