On Oct 18, 2006, at 10:36 PM, Igal Koshevoy wrote:
I've really enjoyed working with Hpricot while writing Rails integration tests, but I doubt it can compete with the performance of a good XSLT implementation. Given that all your pages will be passing through this filter, performance might be a significant concern.
I also suggested this, so I'd like to chime in and remind that it really is a last resort.
However, there might be a way to handle this that can keep the editing needs that Thomas has and still allow for fast best-case transformations.... Use both.
I imagine that many of your applications can either be tailored to, or already produce sane XHTML output. I'm also getting the feeling that several of your applications are third-party, which limits what you can do with them (either from a time or possibility perspective). So, in the case where you have no choice, slap a hpricot-based filter on them, and generate predictable XHTML. Then, XSLT can be used on all the applications to produce a template which your content editors can use - if designed properly, this will make it easy (as possible) for them to change the interface on a whim (which was the case at all the places I have worked at previously). You could even write an interface to help them manage the individual transformations required, if necessary.
This probably sounds more complex than it is - one layer has already been described as something apache can do itself, and the other layer is at worst an issue of mod_ruby + mod_proxy. The end result however is that you take a lot of the complexity of handling any addition to your sites away from the content designers: you should literally be able to drop a new application in (say, phpBB or whatnot), tweak a few filters and be production-ready. Your content people at that point should only have to make minor, if any, customizations.
-- Erik Hollensbe [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ PDXRuby mailing list [email protected] IRC: #pdx.rb on irc.freenode.net http://lists.pdxruby.org/mailman/listinfo/pdxruby
