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RE: [xsl] Is this strategy for runtime fixed-width->xml conversions worthwhile?

2006-04-28 15:36:38
You might be interested in 

http://www.idealliance.org/proceedings/xml04/papers/111/mhk-paper.html

to see how far this kind of approach can take you. What you are proposing is
much simpler. As you say, it could be done in a variety of ways, but it's
certainly not overkill to use XSLT for this.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Karr, David [mailto:david(_dot_)karr(_at_)wamu(_dot_)net] 
Sent: 28 April 2006 22:09
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: [xsl] Is this strategy for runtime fixed-width->xml 
conversions worthwhile?

I'm wondering about viable strategies for runtime conversion 
of fixed-width messages into XML (and back, I suppose).  I 
know there are various frameworks that do this, but it 
occurred to me this could be done entirely with XSLT.

The stylesheet would have a single template element, which 
would cover the entire message format (unless there are 
conditional pieces).  The input to the stylesheet could be 
empty, and a single stylesheet parameter would be the "input" 
to the stylesheet.  Each reference in the template to the 
input would use the "substring()" function, to pull the 
appropriate portion of the parameter into the element.

I'm not sure exactly how the reverse direction would work, however.

Is this approach at all worthwhile?  What are specific 
problems with this idea?

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