On Friday 02 November 2001 3:33 pm, Joshua Slive wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: James A Sutherland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > The XML is very simple and includes only the content of the page > > > without extra formating information or the side menu. The > > > transformation is necessary so that we can alter the look and feel of > > > multiple > > > > pages on the > > > > > site without having to edit every single html page. > > > > All of which can be done using a combination of CSS and SSI: mark your > > headings with <h1> and your paragraphs with <p> and that's it. (I'm using > > inline style="..." rather than a style sheet, which makes the > > <h1> tags a > > little nastier-looking, but helps Netscape 4 rendering.) > > Sure, but it is much less flexible than the system we have in place. Take > a look > at http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/site/ and see how nice and simple the > xml is.
Nice and simple indeed. In fact, almost byte-by-byte the same as the HTML I have here for the same job, making the whole comparison almost redundant :) > This allows us in the future to make arbitrary changes to the > look/feel/structure of the site without touching the source files. From an > xml source there are also lots of choices for the transformation > (xsl,anakia,etc), so we are not locked into a particular tool. > > I have done sites with extensive SSI, and I have to say that xml > transformations seem to be much cleaner and more flexible. It does look like a good setup. As I say, you can achieve almost exactly the same results with SSI+CSS, but there's little point changing from one to the other... The one change I would suggest is making the transformation produce CSS-based XHTML; I've done a version of the front page which Validates perfectly as XHTML1 Strict and still renders reasonably on Netscape 4, using purely CSS for style control. I think I'll have a play with the XML system myself over the next few days, time permitting... James. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
