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RE: XHTML as presentation "normal form"?


I suppose it's reasonable.  One word of warning is that usability is king
much more so with WML/HDML than with XHTML.  In other words, you will need
to do everything possible to avoid even one extra keypress with your WML.
(think of the driver driving along at 70 MPH using your site -- you don't
want to be responsible for him driving off the road and crashing, do you?)
So in practice it will take tons of human intervention to "port" your XHTML
to WML.  It seems like an even more reasonable approach is to design the
site with WML/HDML as the explicit target, and use XSL or somthing to take
the WML decks back to HTML.  There are, of course, gateways out there that
will proxy HTML pages down to WML devices, but if you have ever used any you
will know they do a fairly crappy job..

The other technique is to not have a "normal" document form, but instead use
a very generic semistructured XML as your common format, then use XSL
stylesheets to transform that into your XHTML and WML.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Holser [mailto:pholser@objectspace.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 6:56 AM
> To: 'XSL-List@mulberrytech.com'
> Subject: XHTML as presentation "normal form"?
> 
> 
> the application i'm working on generates content of several different
> markup types (HTML, HDML, WML).  we'd like to move to XML morphed by
> XSL stylesheets.  however, it's not as simple as just wrapping some
> presentation around XML data--sometimes the presentation is data
> also (button labels, headers, etc.).
> 
> we're considering using XHTML as a "normal form" of 
> presentation, which
> can then be pecked at by XSL stylesheets appropriate for a 
> given target
> markup type.  my thought is that this would save us from inventing our
> own XML vocabulary for presentation, if XHTML's capabilities could be
> considered a superset of those of HDML/WML.
> 
> with the above in mind...
> 
> 1) are there freely available stylesheets that can transcode XHTML
> to roughly equivalent HDML/WML?
> 
> 2) if yes to 1), do these stylesheets handle HDML/WML's notion of
> "decks" and "cards" well?
> 
> 3) does my approach seem reasonable?
> 
> thx,
> p
> 
> --
> // Paul Holser, Infrastructure Specialist
> // Phone: 972.726.4560/1.800.OBJECT1 x4560
> // E-mail: pholser@objectspace.com
> // ---------------------------------------
> // ObjectSpace, Inc.
> // The Leader in Business-to-Business Solutions
> // http://www.objectspace.com
> 
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 


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