Wow, a major reduction in code size and removes lexically spurious
layouts too!
Vote: #2.
Opinion:
That's the easiest of the three to recall and introduces no new
attributes to keep track of. How it works makes sense using commonly
known patterns. Makes clear the mechanism and invites the user to use
the actual format() call programmatically on other nodes.
If i were king:
<text datapath="person/" text="%s %s" format="$path{'firstName/text
()', 'lastName/text()'}" />
Opinion:
- the use of the text attribute is retained looks as normal as possible
- inclusion of the new functionality is orthogonal to existing code
patterns.
- seems easy to remember.
- Would still have to learn both this tag and the format() function
to fully grok it, like the other attribute fudges below.
On Jul 11, 2007, at 2:43 PM, P T Withington wrote:
We recently added a `format` method to the text tag that allows you
to format the content of a text tag using the standard printf-style
controls. We think this will be most useful when data binding a
text node. As an example, if you have an XML dataset of people
with firstName and lastName nodes, you currently would display each
element by saying:
1. <view datapath="person/" layout="axis: x">
<text text="$path{'firstName/text()'}" />
<text text="$path{'lastName/text()'}" />
</view>
With the addition of the format method, you can now say this more
compactly, using only 1 node, instead of 3 (which is also more
efficient):
2. <text datapath="person/"
ondata="format('%s %s', datapath.xpathQuery('firstName/text
()'), datapath.xpathQuery('lastName/text()'))"
/>
When the data gets bound to the text node, you fill in the text by
calling format and making the two xpath queries as arguments to the
format method.
But we are considering two other possible syntaxes:
3. <text datapath="person/"
dataformat="'%s %s'"
data=$path{'firstName/text()', 'lastName/text()'}
/>
Here you specify a format control string for the data associated
with the text node, and we allow you to make multiple queries in
your $path constraint.
4. <text datapath="person/" dataformat="'%{firstName/text()}1$q %
{lastName/text()}1$q'" />
Here the queries are embedded in the control string with a custom
extension.
Please cast your vote!
