learning web design

[Jim Dabell]

Re: learning web design

Jim Ley wrote:

[snip][color=blue]
> Yes, which means you can freely use that XHTML to generate HTML 4.01
> via simple XSLT's which you actually publish...[/color]

Where all you are doing is pulling content out of a database and straight
onto the page, the extra resources needed for XSLT can be hard to justify,
especially if the content isn't cachable.

[color=blue]
> The issue being that publishing XHTML isn't very well supported[/color]

It depends how you look at it. XHTML/Appendix C is very well supported in
the sense that you can publish it and expect to have very few UAs
misunderstand you. On the other hand, there are hardly any XHTML
conformant UAs about, which is what you are referring to, I assume.

[color=blue]
> I'd also suggest that using XSLT as a source is pretty poor, and if
> you're interested in doing this I'd really recommend keeping your
> content in a more semantically meaningful manner.[/color]

s/XSLT/XHTML/ right?

I mostly agree with you here, but in the context of Andy's example, it isn't
really applicable.

--
Jim Dabell

[Nick Kew]

Re: learning web design

In article <RP-dnXJBOfxPh6SiXT WQkQ@giganews.c om>, one of infinite monkeys
at the keyboard of Jim Dabell <jim-usenet@jimdabel l.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> There's a very big technical difference, which is that XHTML is an XML
> application, and so you can use generic XML tools with it, such as XSLT
> processors.[/color]

Not a big technical issue. If I'd been faced with Andy's task, I'd just
have interposed an HTML->XHTML filter if I didn't have a better tool to
hand.

OTOH, I do have a better tool to hand. Instead of making HTML->XHTML
an extra parsing step, I'd use HTML->Document Tree. That's part of
the XSLT process anyway, so it avoids the extra processing overhead
of HTML->XHTML.

I've nothing against XHTML; I just don't buy most of the arguments
for preferring it to HTML. In this case as in most, the two are
equivalent.

--
Nick Kew

In urgent need of paying work - see http://www.webthing.com/~nick/cv.html

[Jim Ley]

Re: learning web design

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 02:20:25 +0930, Tim <admin@sheerhel l.lan> wrote:
[color=blue]
>On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 01:36:42 +0930, Tim <admin@sheerhel l.lan> wrote:
>Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesm iths.com> wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Half an hour's work with XSLT, applied to the pre-existing output of
>> the untouched site.[/color]
>
>I still don't see the advantage. I'm not trying to be painful, but can
>you provide a sample of XHTML source, which demonstrates how it
>structures the data better than HTML, for machine re-analysis?[/color]

The situation is Andy has an XSLT hammer, therefore he needs an XML
source, that means XHTML is better than the DB, or HTML or anything,
simply because his tool is XSLT - those of us with javascript hammers
would do it differently, as would anyone else.

Andy's argument is only true if you have an XSLT hammer and your task
is 90% transformation into a different format (little processing)

Jim.
--
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