Re: What shall we do with the W3C DOM?

> Actually, the aim was to have an XML file in place of each HTML page -
then
> in response to either the browser or a user specification, the XML file
> could be translated via XSLT into HTML (or WML or whatever) suitable for
> the user.
>
> I'd really like to point out a common misunderstanding: "XML" isn't a
> "mark-up language", but a "set of guidelines" or rules that you can use to
> create your own (XML-based) language specific to your individual
> needs.  (OTOH you may choose to
>
> XSLT allows you to transform _your_ XML-based language into
standards-based
> languages like HTML, XHTML, WML, PDF, and RTF (to name a few).

The real problem, as I see it, with using XML and XSLT to produce documents
for end users is the complexity involved.  This is not to say, in any way,
that XML and XSLT do not have a place, and not to say that they might not
eventually replace HTML completely.  They are very robust methodolgies (XML
is so robust, in fact, that it has nothing built-in - everything is left to
the creator of the XML code - the first time I looked at XML, I read "it has
no built-in tags" and I thought, "well, the hell good is that?!?"  Of
course, now that I have provided data to third-parties in XML, I understand
much of the "good."  But I still don't see it taking over HTML any time
soon.

I went to XML.com to read up a bit, and I found this samples of HTML versus
XSLT content to create a line of text, with the word "From" in normal text,
the words "(Customer Reference)" in italics, and the data, "cust123", in
bold italics:

(dots added by me)

HTML:

<.p>From: <.i>(Customer Reference) <.b>cust123<./b><./i><./p>

XSLT:

<.fo:block space-before.optimum="20pt" font-size="20pt">From:
<.fo:inline-sequence font-style="italic">(Customer Reference)
<.fo:inline-sequence font-weight="bold">cust123<./fo:inline-sequence>
<./fo:inline-sequence>
<./fo:block>

Now, I understand that this is a contrived example, intended to illustrate
other points, but I look at the second bit of code and wonder why I would
want to do all that coding when all the browsers I need to work with support
the i tag?

Again, I'm not saying that in the long run this will not be the best way.  I
love CSS in the way it allows me to separate content and presentation, and
XML and XSLT are just the next generation of that.  But just as there are
(my guess) more pages out there with not a single byte of CSS, after all
this time, it will take a long time to have XML and XSLT come into wide
usage by the developer community.  We're interested in getting results to
our clients.  Our clients are interested in getting results to their
customers.  Their customers may still be using version 4 broswers, or lower.
I sill have a few IE 3 and NN 2 users hit my sites every so often, not to
mention Lynx.  By using HTML, I know the latest browsers can see my content,
and so can the older ones.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Mount, Software Engineer            steve(at)saltyrain.com
Home Site                            http://www.saltyrain.com
US Constitution Online          http://www.usconstitution.net

HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA