Re: [xsl] XSLT WYSIWYG WEB Editor

At 07:36 PM 12/14/2006, you wrote:
> I am looking for tool where the XSLT could be created by non developers.
This is kind of like asking for the kitchen equipment that can be 
used by people who don't know how to cook.
There do exist tools that presume to do this -- or I should say, from 
time to time someone has tried to sell such a tool -- but they have 
not gone far in the marketplace. (If anyone has any counter-examples 
to share, please do.) This is mainly because if you don't know how to 
cook, even fancy kitchen equipment isn't going to help. Indeed, just 
as with cooking, an expert chef might be able to make good use of 
fancy equipment to do a better job faster, but in the hands of the 
clueless newbie who doesn't know what he's about -- or the innocent 
fellow who knows he wants his dinner but doesn't want to cook it -- 
such equipment is worse than useless. There might also be "beginner" 
equipment, but the people who use it either decide the work isn't for 
them, or learn enough about what they're doing that they want to go 
on and work with better tools that let them do more.
Potentially, there also exists the equivalent of "canned" XSLT much 
as someone might sell you canned chicken soup, which you could just 
warm up on the stove and not have to cook yourself (though some might 
consider even that to be "cooking"). This might appear as a 
web-form-based interface allowing users to tweak settings which would 
generate XSLT in back, which could then be run. But just as when, if 
you buy chicken soup in a can you can only have chicken soup (and it 
might not even be very good soup), so also, such XSLT would have to 
be fairly limited in application. Also, contriving and configuring 
such a system is the work of real experts (the UI design would be 
non-trivial, to say nothing of the integration), just as corporations 
that sell processed food have professional chefs and chemists working 
for them. This doesn't make it useless -- canned soup is a good thing 
-- but it does mean that it isn't something you can exactly buy off 
the shelf and plug in. It requires real engineering to set it up 
properly even if someone else has already built the "canning 
equipment". Accordingly, the market for this kind of web application 
has been slow to develop.
If you could build such a system successfully and then generalize it 
so others could install, configure and use it more easily than they 
could learn to use XSLT, you'd have a chance to get really rich.
Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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