From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-10-21T00:20:28+09:00
Subject: Re: XSLT

Francis Hwang wrote:
> 
> 
> I think of XSLT as another templating language, like Erb or ColdFusion 
> or what-have-you. Seems that the main benefit of a templating language 
> is that, if you've got lots of static markup with a teensy bit of 
> dynamic content, the template lets you see the static stuff clearly. For 
> example,

Interesting.  I see XSLT as a transformational language, not a 
templating  language, though it can be used for the latter.  But if what 
you need is basic templating, then XSLT is overkill.


> 
> <tr>
>   <td>Name</td>
>   <td><%= user.name %></td>
> </tr>
> 
> is probably a lot easier to read than
> 
> tr_elt = doc.add_element( 'tr' )
> td_elt1 = tr_elt.add_element( 'td' )
> td_elt1.text = 'Name'
> td_elt2 = tr_elt.add_element( 'td' )
> td_elt2.text = user.name

True.  And likely easier to read than the corresponding XSLT.  More 
often than not, I use REXML's stream or pull parser, catch events and 
whatnot, and just populate a template or interim data struture.


James