It's interesting to hear about the broader adoption of XSL in a "Model 3".
I was (and still am) an enthusiastic adopter of XSL but I'd like to add a
cautionary
note and remark that from my experience:
1. XSL is non-procedural and although it is incredibly easy to use for
rudimentary
operations it rapidly becomes very complex when anything a bit more
sophisticated is
required. This applies to both the features of xsl (callable templates,
attribute sets and so on) and to the XPath syntax for matching node sets.
2. lack of data-type support means having to bind in java/javascript
extension functions e.g. for date formatting
3. building XSL files is a radically different proposition to building HTML
(and by extension JSP). This means that you lose the *division of labour*
that assigns UI construction to (presumably less *technical*) Web Designers.
Again I have found this to be the case for anything other than the most
trivial of cases.
4. lack of "self-documenting" features. It's very difficult to come back to
an XSL file after a while and figure out what some of it actually does; this
raises the bar on expectation for clear comments by the author(s). I have
the same "concerns" with SQL as with XPath but at least in SQL I can perform
an EXPLAIN PLAN to see how the DBMS engine is interpreting the command. I
would really like a similar rationalization capability in XPath.
Now, on the positive I have found it great for basic forms and the
formatting of static
tables but, as indicated above, I rapidly hit a ceiling where the increasing
complexity
required for incremental functionality was prohibitive.
How does this compare to others' experiences?
Regards
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