On Dec 4, 2004, at 11:14 PM, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:Le 4 déc. 04, à 21:03, Glen Ezkovich a écrit :That's what I mean - having a transformer that can use the same template syntax as used in the generator, so that the template language can be used for both the generation and transformation steps.
On Dec 4, 2004, at 3:37 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
...Currently we have JXTG for the first step, and mostly XSLT for the second. Having something that could cover both steps and be usable by either programmers working on the first step or designers working on the second would be a Really Good Thing.
I'm not really sure what you mean by having something that could cover both steps. JXTG covers both steps in the sense that many people are using it to inject their data into their html. Now, to have a template transformer, that is something with which I would really like to play. I'm not very found of XSL. A simpler alternative could be a Really, Really Good Thing.
My FS detector is out of scale!!
This is *exactly* what the XSLT WG did and failed miserably. XSLT can be used for both generation and tranformation. But it looks right for one (besides the stupid XML-ish syntax) and totally ackward for the other. XQuery is the same thing, only reversed: it can be used as a template language, and as a transformation language. If feels better for the first one (only ackward because, as usual, the XSLT WG starts with one name and ends up defining something else) and totally wrong for the second.
Look at my eyes and repeat with me: I DO NOT WANT TO REPEAT THE MISTAKES THAT THE XSTL WG DOES OVER AND OVER YEAR AFTER YEAR.
Generation and transformation are two different things, done often by different people and for different goals and with different constaints.
Having one language for both will do only harm, because it will make it harder for people to decide when to use generation and when to use transformation.
But in both cases here we are talking about templates. I like a two pass approach. Inject the data into an XML template, then take that data and inject it into an XHTML template. I prefer this approach precisely because different people do each each job. Developers handle generation and designers handle what would be the transformation but in this case it would/could be pure injection. I don't see a template transformer as a replacement for XSLT, just as an alternative. It hopefully will be much simpler.
Glen Ezkovich HardBop Consulting glen at hard-bop.com http://www.hard-bop.com
A Proverb for Paranoids:
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
- Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
