Hi Mattias, Rex,
You both said the same thing so I'll address you both. XML and XSLT have
been debated over and over on this list. ;) I think everyone here is quite
familiar with what it can do and how to properly use it. Although it has
many strengths, I think the basic complaints were: convoluted, too strict,
and slow. My personnal problem with it is that I can't give it to a laymen
integrator or designer. They'll need training first and many of my clients
don't want that. You basically haven't done anything to make the template
developer's job easier if you tell them to code it all in XSLT, especially
if, as the point of this thread tries to stress, you haven't forced
structure. Don't get me wrong - I encourage its use for complex things like
dynamic drop down menus, comprehensive client-side searches, and contextual
glossaries. But I definately won't force it and certainly wouldn't use it
as a foundation for a CMS. This however is a personnal choice and not to
say it couldn't be done (many devs on this list have such systems). I store
everything in a relational DB but I have hierarchies internally and can
export (in fact do very much export) huge XML islands. The point of this
thread is whether structure is imposed prior to content creation and who is
responsible for defining that structure. There is no way I will get an
editor (the person) to build an XML schema although I could build a good
WYSIWYG editor that outputs one. Again, are you editor-centric or
integrator-centric?
a.
André Milton
www.mlore.com
--
http://cms-list.org/
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