Re: [xml-dev] XSL writing

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2009-04-24 17:05 +0100, P. White wrote:
>Apologies for posting such a simple problem to a rather advanced list, but
>I am dipping my toe into the world of XML stylesheets, and would very
>much appreciate a little feedback, and maybe some help...

XSLT and XPath questions would be better posted to the following list:

   http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

There are a number of subscribers who would enthusiastically respond 
to such questions.

There is also an *excellent* XSLT FAQ at:

   http://www.dpawson.co.uk

>Basically, I have taken an XML SiteMap, and written a simple stylesheet
>to render it in a browser window. My attempt is documented at:
>
>http://manx.biz/opensource/Grimoire/SiteMaps
>
>Firstly:
>  This is being used as a training exercise. As such, I am trying to be as
>  pedantic and technically correct as possible. Have I got everything
>  correct here? any omissions?

Not many of us volunteers have the time for such open-ended questions 
... looking at the question marks:

(1) - no DOCTYPE is needed (though I find them handy at times for 
some entity shortcuts)

(2) - excluding-result-prefixes is used to prune the stylesheet node 
tree of namespaces irrelevant to the construction of the result 
tree.  Unless you are also using Dublin Core in your XHTML, then you 
should probably prune the "dc" namespaces as well while you are at it.

(3) - attribute sets are handy first-class constructs used to manage 
a collection of attributes as a whole, they are not required to be used

Otherwise it looks quite straightforward.

>Secondly:
>  It works. Quite simplistic, but it does the job. However, I am wondering if
>  there is anything more I can do. I am most tempted by the idea of sorting
>  a large SiteMap by the directories contained therein, thus I have a block of
>  http://site/dir-1/* entries, followed by the next directory, and so on...
>  However, with my current skills, this is defeating me. Any suggestions on
>  how I can achieve this?

Again, far too open-ended a question to expect volunteers to take the 
time to answer.

I suggest you come up with more specific questions regarding XSLT 
functionality and post them to the Mulberry list.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . Ken

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