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Hi Simon,
Simon said:
No. XSLT was designed for formatting-by-transformation, while CSS was
designed for formatting-by-annotation.
That may not feel like competition to you, but to people who are primarily
interested in the formatting, it's competition.
Didier replies:
Yes it is competing but not with the same advantages. CSS is more limited
due to its nature and right at the beginning will suffer from an unfair
competition.
Since the CSS model is based on a 1::1 mapping between an XML object and a
rendering object, my rendition is limited to the structure and order imposed
by my original XML document. Moreover, the only visual object made available
to me are the one proposed by CSS.
In contrast, XSLT allows a 1::n mapping which directly translates into the
capacity to create - on the fly - new rendering objects. XSLT allows me to
create new objects not part of a visual model, for instance, I may create
new visual objects like tabs, explorer like trees, windows or dialog boxes
even if the target rendering language doesn't include such objects. This is
probably the most powerful feature of XSLT and unfortunately, CSS cannot
sustain the competition against such versatility. But such versatility comes
with a certain price, the price to go through a learning curve.
Thus CSS is easier to learn but suffers from its inherent limitations. XSLT
is a lot more powerful and versatile but suffers from a steep learning
curve. Its like flying with a delta place, I do not need to get a license,
its easy to learn but I cannot go far and do what I want in the air. In
contrast flying an airplane gives me more autonomy but is more complex to
learn and in addition I need to go through a learning curve to get a
license. Both delta plane and airplanes are needed, fulfill different needs,
involve different costs and provide different degree of freedom.
Cheers
Didier PH Martin
http://didier-martin.com
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