I've been playing [1] with Conal Tuohy's transform [2], to generate XSLT transforms based on simple attribute-based templates (HTML in this case, could be whatever) and I like it very much.
Converting attribute-based templates to XSLT instead of processing them directly is fairly easy to implement, easy to use for the template writer yet powerful by giving access, when needed, to all XSLT constructs. And the syntax of attributes like for-each or apply-templates *is* XSLT, so Bob can ask Alice for help when needed ([3]).
There's more info, including source code, on the wiki [1]. Feel free to use this page as a poor man's source code control system for improving this, if people like it we might want to include this our distribution?
Compared to Conal's version, the current version allows "element templates" to be defined in the HTML template, they are similar to XSLT templates but much easier to write. I think this adds a lot of power while allowing the template to remain concise and modular, and "fairly" editable in visual tools. There has to be a compromise somewhere I think, converting XML data to HTML or another format *is* programming at some stage, the "100% visual" paradigm does not work for this in today's world IMHO.
Comments/opinions/enhancements/flames are welcome (well, maybe not flames but if you think this sucks I'm all ears ;-)
-Bertrand
[1] http://wiki.apache.org/cocoon/HtmlToXsltExperiments [2] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&m=110246247525208&w=2 [3] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&m=110231970204971&w=2
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