Re: A silly idea?

It is not a silly idea.

With any test case (or in this case example), one can usefully ask what it
proves if the test case passes, and even more usefully what it proves if the
test case fails.  For a start, the proposed example would prove that an
XForms document can be completely processed by an XSLT stylesheet.  That
fact is useful as basic knowledge and also has some practical value.

If the example is not possible in principle, the loss of practical value is
small.  However it begs a very interesting question: Why not?

Therefore: Not a silly idea.

I doubt that I can deliver the proposed example, but I promise to think
about it.

=Philip

Robert Trybis wrote:

> I said that I would like to "future proof" my forms by starting to write
> them in xforms.
> Responses pointed out that xforms is only at working draft 1.0 so any
> xforms generated now might require to be revised several times.
>
> This triggered the, probably silly, idea that all XML specifications
> (XFROMS, XHTML etc. etc.) should include XSLT stylesheets that would
> take a document conforming to that revision of the specification and
> spit it straight back out.
>
> This sounds a bit pointless. However such a specification would mean
> people instantly had working stylesheets, conforming to the
> specification, which they could begin to modify. It would also mean
> that, with a bit of cutting and pasting between two specifications,
> stylesheets could be generated that would update xforms compliant with
> earlier specifications to the latest revision. It might even help with
> the generation of stylesheets that translate between say Xforms and
> XHTML, if only for UI markup purposes. Having working stylesheets would
> be a big boost to people like myself who are trying to quickly get to
> grips with several new technologies and it would help standardisation
> and long term maintenance.
>
> Is this a silly idea, if so why? - fire away.
>
> Robert

Received on Thursday, 5 September 2002 07:32:54 UTC