xml-dev - Re: A weaker XSL?

[Clark Evans <clark.evans@manhattanproject.com>]

Peter Seibel wrote:
> 
> I'm not arguing that you can implement XSL so it uses no heap, just that
> you could implement it on top of SAX rather than DOM. Or am I still missing
> something?

I think you are echoing my belief.  

Question: Is XSL defining "style" instructions 
or "composition" instructions.

Things like sorting, re-arranging, table-of-contents 
generation, etc. are really large processing instructions 
that are more along the line of *what* to process, rather 
than *how* the information should be presented. Things like 
this could be moved into XQL or some other transformation 
language, leaving XSL a more pure "style" oriented 
specification.  

Thus XSL wouldn't be *generating* a table of contents, 
it would only let you choose if you want to display it,
and if it is displayed, how it is displayed, in green
ink or red, bold or itallic, Aa1i style or 1.1.1.1 
style, etc.  

By doing this, a weaker XSL would have a much more 
clearly defined role, would be less subject to 
"feature creep", and could be implemented on top 
of SAX instead of assuming (and requiring) a full 
DOM implelementation.

Just $.02   

;) Clark Evans

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