RE: [xml-dev] so why don't more browsers support XSLT?

[Frank Richards <frichards@softquad.com>]

>>But rendering generic markup has _always_ needed a transformation
language, and XML does not change that.
<<

Certainly, in the general case you need a transformation language, _and_ a
decoration language.

Which seems to produce conflicting interests: the browser vendors are
motivated to skimp on the decoration language and have the users make it up
in the transform. However many (all my colleagues and competitors anyway)
users would like to see a full decoration language so they could write a
somewhat fancier stylesheet and use a null transform in those (common,
especially if it's a design goal) cases where it can be done.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: David Carlisle [mailto:davidc@nag.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 9:59 AM
To: frichards@softquad.com
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] so why don't more browsers support XSLT?



me> you need _something_  unless your XML is so close to HTML that CSS
me> can be used.

> Why? Seems to me that as long as you don't need to reorder things, CSS
> should do the job.

yes exactly, that's what I meant. If your table model is so close to the
CSS/HTML table model that you can get tables just by decorating elements
with CSS table properties then effectively your tables are html tables,
with possibly different element names. as soon as you come to some other
table model (cals being an obvious culprit) which has (at least)
different semantics for spanning specifications, then you are going to
need re-odering.

Similarly for linking. Either your XML exactly follows the structure
of xlink (or, in Opera, clink and you decorate it with CSS), or it
doesn't. And in the latter case you need to transform it to some linking
the browser does understand. (eg html a)

I really don't mean to bash CSS or Opera as CSS has its uses, and Opera
is a really nice implementation of what they chose to implement.

But rendering generic markup has _always_ needed a transformation
language, and XML does not change that.

David

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