About 3 years ago I posted on this list asking if anyone else was interested in using TAL/METAL to produce XSLT stylesheets that could then be further processed.
The folks over at Bitflux have toyed with this a bit: http://wiki.bitflux.org/Templates_TAL I've been playing with their TAL processing stylesheet (which they seem to have stopped working on) http://svn.bitflux.ch/repos/public/popoon/trunk/components/transformers/xsltal/tal2xslt.xsl And have started adding fill-slot/define-slot support to it. Also, trying to setup some unit tests. -- All my Zope websites these days are more data driven then content driven. Each page "class" is a python script that returns an "XML context blob" with a stylesheet PI. That stylesheet then generates the HTML (usually on the client browser, but on the server if necessary). By page "class", I mean that many URI's are handled by a single pythonscript via traverse_subpath handling, and each script handles a specific class of "page types". The xslt stylesheets themselves also have xsl:include statements that work, sorta like metal macros. With further use of the document() function in the xslt stylesheets, 99% of browsers can cache individual page fragments in the client's browser. This approaches the ultimate goal of the ESI (Edge Side Includes) specification. http://www.esi.org/index.html Throw into that mix AJAX-style interfaces (sorry for buzzword use), and the usefulness of XML-backed Zope sites increases dramatically. Suddenly my RESTful data sources can be exposed, either by compositing into the html page directly during HTML generation via the document() function.. Or dynamically via XML-HTTP requests, or both! Also, where appropriate, my data sources can render their output as XML or javascript literal or javascript arrays (though the later is client-side javascript specific). Mozilla's transformix engine isn't very fast, so for google-suggest style interfaces sending over javascript arrays is better than sending XML. Though in a pinch, I also have used an XSLT file to convert XML back into javascript literal format on the client. This works until E4X is implemented in client browsers: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm -- For my clients, using XML/XSLT as the basis for web-site architecture has dramatically simplified my site designs, while simultaneously increasing the flexability in interface creation through the composition of data sources and templates (xslt). Additionally, offline back-end processing via XSL-FO is now possible with hardly any additional effort. -- But back to ZPT and XSLT. In ZPT, the TALES context space serves as the root of the data source tree that is used to expand TAL elements. ZPT sheets can be tested in-situ as they are being edited by clicking on the test tab. For TAL/XSLT, the context space comes from the "XML context blob" (with the launch point stylesheet PI). TAL to XSLT requires a pre-processing step, where the tal document is converted to xslt. Perhaps this will be a three-step process if we want to make METAL expansion a distinct phase (to ease previewing and editing of the TAL page). This makes working with TAL/XSLT at least a three-step process. 1. Metal expansion 2. TAL to XSLT 3. Final rendering of "XML context blob" to XHTML (or whatever). This step usually occurs on the client browser. Different XML context blobs can use the same XSLT stylesheet. So in some respects this is somewhat similar to Zope acquisition, where the "data context" can be applied to a "template context" through the arrangement of the requesting URL. -- So, is anyone interested in TAL to XSLT? I guess I should have blogged about this instead.. Can't remember where I left my blog... -- Brad Clements, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (315)268-1000 http://www.murkworks.com AOL-IM or SKYPE: BKClements _______________________________________________ ZPT mailing list [email protected] http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zpt
