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Re: More XSL Discussion

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At 10:17 25/02/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Sean Mc Grath wrote:
>> 
>> So what are you saying? That doing this:
>> 
>> <!-- XSL based report writer written in two seconds. Understandable
>> in one second, and a lot easier to write, maintain and run than
>> an equivalent perl, python, omnimark, c++, scheme, tcl, adept program
>> would ever be -->
>> <element type = "chapter">
>>  <element type = "sect1">
>>   <target-element type = "title">
>>    println (...)
>> 
>> is an abuse of XSL?

[Paul Prescod]
>No. It is simply not XSL. XSL specifies a mapping from an input to an
>output. No matter how interesting one half or the other may be, that
>half is *not XSL* without the other half. What you have above is an
>XSL-like language for report writing -- which is probably quite
>useful...it just isn't XSL. 

I contend it is XSL. There is nothing in the spec. that I can
see that says "you must have a flow object". Quite right too
IMHO.

I further contend that using, say, msxsl (yes, I know it is only
a technology preview of a moving target) without flow objects
to munge XML is pretty darn useful. It has already saved
me many hours of tedium doing reports/queries/harvesting
etc. of XML docs.

If noone else finds XSL very useful for doing this sort of
thing then I have clearly missed out on some excellent tools
you guys have that I do not!



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