[Zope] a funny thing happened today...

[Evan Simpson]

I can't claim to know a lot about XSL, but the tutorials I glanced at gave
me the definite impression that it is very similar (in functionality) to
DTML!  The major differences seem to be that an XSL document is also a valid
XML document, and that XSL has a heavy declarative/pattern-matching flavor,
while DTML is purely procedural code embedded in HTML.  Of course, there's
the (currently theoretical) difference that XSL rendering of XML can happen
on the client end.

Without getting into syntax, XSL rendering seems to work like this:  Start
at the root of the XML document.  Search for the XSL node with the pattern
which most closely matches the current XML node.  Use that XSL node as a
template, plugging in required data from the XML subtree, and recursively
process XML subnodes whenever the template requests it.

Contrast this with DTML, which acts rather like a single XSL node, except
that it has many flow control tags and can call on other methods.  More
procedural, in other words.  I suspect, given Zope's new XML expertise, that
you could write an XSL renderer in DTML (with a few well-chosen external
methods) :-D

----- Original Message -----
From: Martijn Faassen <m.faassen@vet.uu.nl>
> I know next to nothing about XSL and Java servlets. I'd like to study
> XSL sometime, is it really that arcane? I read something about DC going
> to fit XSL into Zope, so I'm curious about it.