W3C Recommends XSL 19
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The W3C upgraded
XSL 1.0
to the status of a recomendation today, as they reported in
a press release." From that release: "XSLT 1.0 makes it possible to significantly change the original structure of an XML document (automatic generation of tables of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc.), while XSL 1.0 makes complex document formatting possible through the use of formatting objects and properties."
Wasn't it supposed to be simple? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought that the original goal was to make a _simple_ declarative language that handled 80% of the transformations easily and left the other 20% to something else (like using a real language). Even the simplest tasks require too much code in my opinion. My first XSLT project, a learning project, was to write the game of life, as it is with every new tool. I have two versions, the shortest being 150 lines that required the field to be an ugly composition of <o/> and <X/> elements.
There is a very high syntax to semantics ratio. Similar operations require different syntax, such as inserting an element can be done literally, but inserting an attribute requires special instructions (a minimum of 2 elements). There is no continuity in the different ways to reference a variable binding. You use templates to generate the structure of the XML but cannot generate text structure in a similar way, neither content data or attribute value data. Blah blah blah... I could go on. It seems like they ended up with a complex framework without strong expressive power. Why couldn't they just do DSSSL with the XML syntax if they wanted it?
Besides, for me it is difficult to look at with XSLT definitions/commands, obviously in XML, sprinkled around output literal XML elements. But I haven't trained my XSLT syntax eye too extensively. It is probably the same way people feel about looking at my DSSSL code.
p.s., I think they lie when they say it is side effect free and completely declarative.
-j