[xsl] Re: [xml-dev] [Ann - Zvon] Templatotron

[james anderson <james dot anderson at setf dot de>]

So far as i understand TAL it is used to analogous ends as are proposed
for Templatotron. Analogous, rather than identical, in that input
objects are data instances rather than documents.

My concern is with the expressiveness rather than the implementation.

To be more direct, the use of the distinguished namespace for element
identifiers in order to trigger transformations introduces the need for
additional operators to specify target namespaces. TAL, on the other
hand, triggers on attributes. Which leaves the element identifer's
namespace unencumbered and permits the "same" transformation to be
expressed with fewer terms.

I would expect that one could do the same with XSLT and was curious why
one didn't.

...

Miloslav Nic wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, james anderson wrote:
> 
> I have not been aware of TAL till this moment.
> 
> ...
> 
> I guess that as an advantage can be considered the fact that you can
> compile a Templatotron template with any XSLT processor and you can then
> use the generated stylesheet with any XSLT enabled program including
> browsers.
> 
> And of course, I consider Templatotron very natural and simple to learn
>  and after scanning  TAL spec I am still not too sure how TAL is to
> be used and so I can argue that TAL is rather over-complex.   :))
> 
> 
> >
> > This looks similar to TAL in the the zope page template system.
> > One difference is the approach to namespaces.
> > In the TAL case, a transformation is triggered simply by the presence of
> > an attribute from the distinguished space. In the Templatotron case,
> > it's the presence of such an element identifier.
> >
> > What was the thinking behind this decision? From reading the tutorial,
> > it was not clear that this latter mechanism affords any advantage to
> > counterbalance the added complexity.
> >
> > Miloslav Nic wrote:
> > >
> > > Templatotron  is a simple language for template based XML processing. It
> > > can be also thought of as a language designed to  save some writing in
> > > XSLT stylesheets and for keeping your attention focused on the XML syntax
> > > not on the XSLT one. I do  not personally mind the rather verbose XSLT
> > > syntax and so in my eyes the second point is much more important but there
> > > are  others who may appreciate Templatotron terseness.
> > >
> > > ....
> >
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> --
> ******************************************
> <firstName> Miloslav </firstName>
> <surname>   Nic      </surname>
> 
> <mail>    nicmila@systinet.com    </mail>
> <support> http://www.zvon.org  </support>

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