On Feb 9, 2004, at 6:39 PM, Alan wrote:
Does the WoodyGenerator go from Woody template to Woody
interface directly?
No — with the WoodyGenerator, there is no Woody template.
It expands the template to include error
messages and the like.
No, see above :-)
Then you have to write a XSLT transform
to turn that very basic information into something suitable for
serialization.
This does sound much more complex that starting the pipeline
with an expression of the structure of the final document.
I don't think you have the idea yet of how the WoodyGenerator works!
In
XSLT it is much easier to transform structure than it is to
express structure.
No it's not easier! It's all markup! No difference at all.
Nothing really to be prefered over the other I guess.
Perhaps it is a matter of habit or taste.
I think it depends on the application. If the form constitutes the fundamental "content" of a page (or part of a page, such that it would be natural to bring it in through aggregation), then the template approach is kind of a wash; it just means you have to mess with this template thing that doesn't do anything for you. But if you had a page with a lot of (static or dynamic) content, where it doesn't feel seem like that content is just "styling" for the form, then I would say the template approach probably feels right. I'm sure you're at least partly right as far as it being a matter of taste... but I would suggest that one way to tell is to look at the other content on the page besides the form elements. If that content is page-specific, then I'd say put it in the form template. But if all the content is shared with other pages, then you're probably doing all that in an XSLT template anyway. If the form template devolves to just the <wt:...> elements themselves, then it's doing nothing for you and it would really be nicer to use the WoodyGenerator (if it worked with flow!...)
Woody is a very impressive piece of work. Thank you for putting all
this effort into it.
Hear, hear! :-)
~ml
