> Jakarta TagLibs also have a taglib that does XSL, have you thought about
> merging your result with theirs?
no, but that's certainly an idea...i wanted a little bit different approach
than the jakarta taglib, so i just rolled my own...
> What I think is the big disadvantage with using XSL it is very complex
> to use, especially if you want to take advantage of its more powerful
> features. If designers are going to have problems understanding
> scriplets and velocity, they're not going to fair much better with XSL
> (probably worse, in fact).
although this might be true now, wysiwyg XSL editors are coming into being
as we speak (the ibm xsl editor is actually pretty neat :-)...the XML/XSL
approach and structure is why i prefer it over scriplets or custom
tags...the whole XML/XSL approach is very OO-centric, where scriptlets or
custom iterative tags are basically hold-overs from structured programming
days...of course, if it ain't broke, yada, yada ;-)
i also find a smaller code size for the same functions, as well as faster
performance in using limited xsl for certain things...especially for ejb
stuff that iterates over records...wow, a big difference ;-)
xml/xsl also makes my EJB infrastructure much more open, as i can request
the data any number of ways and use it in disparate systems and in multiple
instances, without having to code special taglibs for various things...just
a big template file with lots of little stuff in it seems easier to manage
for me than taglib classes, .tld files, etc...
> One good thing about having model data as XML, however, is that you can
> utilize the xpath to access the XML data if you don't need all the bells
> and whistles of XSL
actually i like all the bells and whistles ;-)...
it ain't for everyone, but XSL seems much closer to something my designers
in the past have understood easily...they're more intimidated when they see
a lot of '%' signs ;-) i also off-load some work from myself by using xsl
instead of taglibs, as a java programmer doesn't have to do that
part...anyone that knows xml and xsl can do that...
Jon Brisbin
www.jbrisbin.net
