AW: AW: Templating: experiments with Conal's html-to-xslt transfo rm

[Merico Raffaele <ra...@less.ch>]

Hi Bertrand

> > L) The HTML-template to XSLT transformation is limited to one "level"
> > of
> > data access (i.e. what do you do if you want to process XPATH
> > expressions
> > that are in the XML-data stream?).
> 
> Hmm...go to straight XSLT maybe?
> 
> I currently don't envision using this templating system for more than
> simple/common stuff: keep it simple for simple cases, move up to XSLT
> for the rest.

As an Italian, I'm looking fort he most elegant solution ;-) I wish to have
a template language that solves nearly 100% of all web designer needs.

> Actually it would be easy to include partial XSLT transforms in our
> templates, so that the web designer can ask an expert to write the hard
> stuff.
> 
> > L) How would you solve case specific (if) rendering within a
> > for-each="..."?
> 
> <div case="@blast">
>    Consecutive div having @case are converted to xsl:choose
> </div>
> <div case="">
>    With a default case of course
> </div>
> 
> Is that what you mean?

Thanks for he input, I have to transform it first in my brain ...

> > ...D) I'm not sure if the web designers would be very happy to work
> > with a
> > mixed XSL/XPATH syntax, that's not familiar to them (i.e. <div
> > apply-templates="node()"/> or <h2>{@title}</h2>).
> 
> The node() thing can be easily eliminated by making it the default
> value.
> 
> For the rest, I think the advantages in terms of implementation far
> outweigh the disadvantages, people will have to learn some syntax
> anyway.
> 
> And not inventing a new syntax means using one that is documented,
> there's tons of XPath info out there.
> 
> > ...D) This approach needs an additional transformation step.
> 
> Yes, but it's certainly cacheable.

You are right ...

> > ...In my opinion for the web designer it would be enough if they would
> > have
> > basic tags of procedural logic like <ctpl:if/> and <ctpl:for-each>
> > bundled
> > with unlimited XPATH capabilities.
> >
> > I'm currently porting my "static" template language based on
> > XSLT/XPATH 1.0
> > to XSLT/XPATH 2.0. As soon it is mature I will make it available for
> > reflection to this list...
> 
> Bring it on, it doesn't need to be mature, experimental is good enough!
> Release early, release often...

Thanks for he encoragement ...

</Raffaele>