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Re: New/old pattern syntax, why can't we have both ?
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Subject: Re: New/old pattern syntax, why can't we have both ? From: Scott Lawton <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 10:56:00 -0400 |
Quick reply to the thread's originator: if I were designing XSL as a
commercial product, I *would* support two syntax options since I agree that
both are useful. But XSL is supposed to be a neutral interchange format so
two variations are counter-productive.
On to the recent thread....
>Mark_Overton@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> This may be the case now because of the lack of tools, but it absolutely
>> will not be in the long run. You will view XSL through some sort of
>> abstraction. If this doesn't happen, then XSL is dead.
Paul Prescod replied:
>XSL has to catch on long before there are widespread GUI tools for it, in
>order for it to have critical mass enough to make the GUI tools feasible.
>Anyways, why should we force (or "encourage") anyone into using a GUI tool
>if they don't want to?
How about text-based tools? Wouldn't it make sense to put the task of
writing an extra parser (to convert the short form into XML) onto a few
tools developers rather than to every XSL developer?
>I must admit, I am bothered by the moral absolutism of the complainers.
I respectfully submit that there's more to it than that.
>I didn't mind the old element-based syntax. It was nice how it reflected
>the structure of the document section being matched. If someone wanted to
>make usability arguments like that, I would be very receptive and might
>well support the element-based syntax.
Ah, excellent. OK, start with a blank slate. Let's say we want to
generate tags in the output. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just include
the literal tags?
<HTML>
<HEAD>
...
Well, we can! (Thanks to the xsl: namespace.)
Now, what's the simplest way to match a set of tags? Wouldn't it be nice
if we could just include the literal tags?
<xsl:match>
<para></para>
</xsl:match>
This "query by example" makes easy cases easy. Yes, complex queries are
more complex (though no more so than the original submission) but I think
there's incredible value in starting from a simple foundation. And, it's
nice to make the query syntax parallel to the generation syntax (or
whatever the term).
Scott
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