RE: Client-side XSLT. Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[Max Dunn <maxdunn@siliconpublishing.com>]

>> > So you call HTML a 'low level junk' 
>> 
>> If the semantic content of the message is within the scope of 
>> HTML then HTML is fine.

> The semantic content? I don't understand this. Really.
> So you want to display something on some client (browser)?
> What the heck is 'semantic content' ? Or maybe I don't 
> understand what are you talking about?

See:
http://www.myopera.com/people/howcome/1999/foch.html

This discusses to some extent why semantic content (as opposed to mere
formatting instructions) is valuable:  

"...it's not formatting objects per se that are harmful (any system that
does formatting uses some kind of formatting objects). The harm is done
when formatting objects are stored and shipped over the Web."

The particular example at the above site presents HTML as an example
semantically richer than FO.  But that is not to say "just send HTML to
the client", for in a similar fashion XML is in many cases semantically
richer than HTML.  The point is why down translate?

>> The initial promise as XML as a language for the web is not met if 
>> the XML is just a private internal format and the only thing that
goes 
>> on the web is a presentation oriented downtranslation of that 
>> information to HTML.

> I think you're playing with words here. I still don't 
> understand your idea about client-side XSLT and 
> what particular problem you want to solve. 

From the above link:
"When removing document semantics and replacing it with presentational
properties, the content moves downwards on the ladder of abstraction and
important information is lost. "

XSLT lets you both structure and format XML content on the client while
persisting the semantics of the XML for whatever else you might do with
it: sort, calculate against, query against, present in another media,
present in a different structure, http post it to a web service, etc.
Yes, this is hardly all simple with pure XSLT and will often take place
in conjunction with other client-side methods, some of which will be
different on different browsers.

I think this will be clear over time with very specific examples.  As we
agree, it is only recently that this capability is being widely
distributed.


Max
http://www.siliconpublishing.com/