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Re: [xsl] Is letting the browser transform XML to XHTML using XSLT a good choice?

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On 3/2/06, Gowri Ratakonda <gratakonda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am a newbie and need the experts' advice so that I
> can go in the right direction .....
>
> For a long time our team has extracted the data we
> wanted, output it as text files, used Perl to convert
> them into HTML for our customers.
>
> Now, our plan is to put the data in XML files. And my
> job is to transform these XML files to XHMTL for our
> users. We support these three browsers:
> IE, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla(UNIX)
>
> Although our initial goal is to publish static pages
> right now, we would like to publish dynamic pages
> eventually. For example, allowing the user to choose
> to look at a given section of the XML file.
>
> So is it a good idea to rely on these three browsers'
> XSLT processor to do the transformation, or should I
> look into other tools? If yes, what are the tools that
> I should consider?

This topic polarises opinions.  For me server-side is the only
choice... The idea of off-loading the transform "burden" to the client
is nice but not really that benificial when all things are considered.
 A google search reveals all the previous conversations about this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&hs=Yyq&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:
en-US:official_s&q=server+side+vs+client+side+transforms&spell=1

> And what's the best method of generating PDFs from
> these XML files?

One way is to use XSL:FO - I don't know if that's the best.  One
problem if you are publishing to the web and to PDF is that you have
to maintain both an XSLT and an XSL:FO when a change is needed.
Another option maybe to publish to XHTML and then look for an XHTML ->
PDF conversion... I wonder if anyone has a solution for this now?

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