Re: [WSG] Experimentations in XSLT

2004-12-09 Thread Lindsay Evans
Hi Jonathan,

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:43:28 -0500, Jonathan T. Sage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If anyone has any information on how to fix #2, I'd also love to hear
> it.  Hope this proves to be a good read!

Try removing the CDATA delimeters & adding the XHTML namespace to the
BODYTEXT element:
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
...

-- 
Lindsay Evans
http://lindsayevans.com/
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RE: [WSG] Experimentations in XSLT

2004-12-09 Thread Ted Drake
What is the cms that you are trying? Is it mosxml? I've been looking into that 
one and would be interested in your opinion. I haven't gotten it to work but I 
think the product looks promising. 


Jonathan T. Sage wrote:

>Since this list is standards based, and I've yet to see any real
>writeup about XSLT and what it is capable of, I figured a would share
>what I found with all of you.  More information about what I did is
>available here:
>
>http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/08/xslt-part-1/
>
>and here:
>
>http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/09/xslt-part-2/
>  
>

1) I think most people aren't sending XSLT to the browser.
2) The CDATA section should probably be just tags because it looks like 
XML to me. If you can't trust that your source is going to be valid XML 
then I guess you can use HTML Tidy on it.

Generally there are some approaches in XSLT that are good,

- Try to use many s and  
rather than matching the root node, writing a template, and copying in 
the bits you want. That way you be more discriminant about what's 
allowed through.
- Try to use namespaces, rather than writing tags, even if it means 
creating your own. As you're writing html, set the default namespace to 
XHTML (or html 4.01, whatever). That way if you integrate with another 
feed of xml you can distinguish your html from the other stuff.

Here's a good XSLT FAQ, maintained by my guru, Dave Pawson, 
http://dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/sect21.html


.Matthew Cruickshank
http://holloway.co.nz/
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Re: [WSG] Experimentations in XSLT

2004-12-09 Thread Matthew Cruickshank

Most XSLT users process data server-side and then send the result of the 
transformation to the client. This is a safer approach than sending XML and 
XSLT to the client.
Yeah, this is absolutely right. The typical xml publishing flow looks 
something like this,

[xml source (docbook/openoffice/xhtml)]
feeds into
[business logic xslt]
which feeds into
[web presentation logic xslt] or [print presentation logic xslt] or [pda 
presentation logic xslt]

and then it's sent to the outside world.
Typically this type of flow from one bit of xslt to the next is called a 
"pipeline", and there's software to assist you in creating these and 
aggregating the results. You can construct pipelines in any language by 
pushing the output from one transformation into another, but these 
frameworks will cache each stage of the pipeline and skip the 
regeneration if the files haven't changed, and other features to ease 
development. Specifically, there's Apache Cocoon which has been in heavy 
use around the world for years. I've used it in a few commercial 
projects and it's one of those frameworks that makes the job so much 
easier. There's my ripoff of Cocoon in PHP called Phpilfer, 
http://holloway.co.nz/phpilfer which has some (in my opinion) important 
technical changes to make it faster than Cocoon (although less XML'y). 
Phpilfer isn't ready for production use yet but I'm putting out a site 
in it over christmas so that'll be a good test.

Mostly, the benefit of XSLT is that you start with these 
media-independent source files that you can convert to web, print, 
voice, xbrl, rss, any format, and it's a well-tested tech that people 
are using every day. If you're a publishing house, or you have a lot of 
content on your website, then these highly structured media-independent 
source files are your gold. People should be more wary of producing 
source documents, spending weeks editing them, and then locking them up 
in a loosely structured format (like MSWord, PDF) that other software 
can't easily get into. XML publishing is about fixing all that.

There's this mediocre presentation for the Wellington PHP user group a 
few years ago about XML publishing, 
http://holloway.co.nz/wellypug/publishing/

Jonathan T. Sage wrote:
Since this list is standards based, and I've yet to see any real
writeup about XSLT and what it is capable of, I figured a would share
what I found with all of you.  More information about what I did is
available here:
http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/08/xslt-part-1/
and here:
http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/09/xslt-part-2/
 

1) I think most people aren't sending XSLT to the browser.
2) The CDATA section should probably be just tags because it looks like 
XML to me. If you can't trust that your source is going to be valid XML 
then I guess you can use HTML Tidy on it.

Generally there are some approaches in XSLT that are good,
- Try to use many s and  
rather than matching the root node, writing a template, and copying in 
the bits you want. That way you be more discriminant about what's 
allowed through.
- Try to use namespaces, rather than writing tags, even if it means 
creating your own. As you're writing html, set the default namespace to 
XHTML (or html 4.01, whatever). That way if you integrate with another 
feed of xml you can distinguish your html from the other stuff.

Here's a good XSLT FAQ, maintained by my guru, Dave Pawson, 
http://dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/sect21.html

.Matthew Cruickshank
http://holloway.co.nz/
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Re: [WSG] Experimentations in XSLT

2004-12-09 Thread XStandard
Hi Jonathan,

Most XSLT users process data server-side and then send the result of the 
transformation to the client. This is a safer approach than sending XML and 
XSLT to the client.

XSLT is a wonderful technology. A while back we did some XML and XSLT training 
for the Canadian government. For those that want a hands on approach to 
learning XSLT, here are a few labs. Lab 4 lets you practice XPath and Lab 5 
lets you practice XSLT. Here is the link:

http://belus.com/training/

Also, Jonathan, I had a look at your XSLT. You can optimize it a bit if you 
replace several  with  or .

Regards,
-Vlad
http://xstandard.com
XStandard Development Team



- Original Message -
From: "Jonathan T. Sage" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 1:43 PM
Subject: [WSG] Experimentations in XSLT


> Good afternoon 
>
> Recently, after the pursuit of a site that does conform to XHTML 1.1
> and CSS2, I became very interested in the XSL/XSLT language, since my
> site has a XML CMS back end already.  I began to look at ways to cut
> out the PHP step.  My experimentations have proved to be very
> interesting, with 2 caveats:
>
> 1.) Obviously 2 pass processing doesn't work.  Catching PHP embedded
> in the source XML becomes impossible.  At this time, I don't have a
> fix for this.
>
> 2.) Firefox (in fact all gecko based browsers) do not support my
> method of embedding HTML in XML...  results are interesting, but
> expected.  Opera doesn't like this method at all, and IE6 displays
> perfectly.
>
> Since this list is standards based, and I've yet to see any real
> writeup about XSLT and what it is capable of, I figured a would share
> what I found with all of you.  More information about what I did is
> available here:
>
> http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/08/xslt-part-1/
>
> and here:
>
> http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/09/xslt-part-2/
>
> If anyone has any information on how to fix #2, I'd also love to hear
> it.  Hope this proves to be a good read!
>
> ~j
>
> --
> Jonathan T. Sage
> Theatrical Lighting / Set Designer
> Professional Web Design
>
> [HTTP://www.JTSage.com]
> [HTTP://design.JTSage.com]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> **
> The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
>
> See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
> for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
> **
>
>

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[WSG] Experimentations in XSLT

2004-12-09 Thread Jonathan T. Sage
Good afternoon 

Recently, after the pursuit of a site that does conform to XHTML 1.1
and CSS2, I became very interested in the XSL/XSLT language, since my
site has a XML CMS back end already.  I began to look at ways to cut
out the PHP step.  My experimentations have proved to be very
interesting, with 2 caveats:

1.) Obviously 2 pass processing doesn't work.  Catching PHP embedded
in the source XML becomes impossible.  At this time, I don't have a
fix for this.

2.) Firefox (in fact all gecko based browsers) do not support my
method of embedding HTML in XML...  results are interesting, but
expected.  Opera doesn't like this method at all, and IE6 displays
perfectly.

Since this list is standards based, and I've yet to see any real
writeup about XSLT and what it is capable of, I figured a would share
what I found with all of you.  More information about what I did is
available here:

http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/08/xslt-part-1/

and here:

http://jtsage.com/apathy/archives/2004/12/09/xslt-part-2/

If anyone has any information on how to fix #2, I'd also love to hear
it.  Hope this proves to be a good read!

~j

-- 
Jonathan T. Sage
Theatrical Lighting / Set Designer
Professional Web Design

[HTTP://www.JTSage.com]
[HTTP://design.JTSage.com]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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