Re: [xml-dev] SGML complexity

["Alexander Johannesen" <alexander.johannesen@gmail.com>]

On 9/7/06, juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com wrote ;
> But sincerely do you think that larger number of articles and books
> devoted to PHP mean that XSLT is easier?

Oh yes, by a large degree. XSLT as a language is substantionally
smaller, smarter, and more dedicated. To do certain things, there's
only a handful of ways. In PHP, there's infinite possibilities, by
virtue of being a full programming language. XSLT is for
transformation, not programming, and hence don't need all that
complexity.

> I think that XSLT is much more difficult than other languages to learn.
> Others agree with me.

In my experience, only those who come at it from a functional
programming perspective. Given that XSLT thrives when being
declarative, I see more people struggle with XSLT because they haven't
got a clue what they're doing, nor have they read what it says on the
tin.

> <blockquote>
...
> <blockquote>
...
> <blockquote>
...

This is silly. Why didn't you search for "XSLT rocks" instead?
-- http://www.43things.com/entries/view/417053
-- http://norman.rasmussen.co.za/45/xslt-transformations/

Obviously not all agree it sucks. I can also provide you with quotes
that says that once you do what you're supposed to do instead of doing
what you think you should do, XSLT is *the* XML tools of choice. I had
a somewhat steep learning curve with XSLT *because* I didn't
understand what it was meant to do. Once I actually read the darn
specification, I felt ashamed and embaressed, and went on to a
declarative and keyed happier lifestyle.

> I prefer to think that XSLT is just no popular when compared to other wb
> technologies. It appears to me more reasonable conclusion.

Popularity has nothing to do with quality. DOM is probably used more
than XSLT. Would you use DOM or XSLT to squeeze goodness from an XML
tree? And more importantly, why?


Alexander
-- 
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
__ http://shelter.nu/ __________________________________________________