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Re: [xsl] XSLT vs Web Components

2014-09-11 10:21:05
Well, the vast majority of XSLT use is server side, and web components aren't 
likely to affect that directly. It's true that a lot of people are moving 
towards maintaining content in HTML5 as their master format, replacing things 
like Docbook and DITA, but it's a mistake to think that eliminates the need for 
transformation: it just becomes a transformation from one HTML5 document to 
another, in place of a transformation from (say) DocBook to HTML5.

In addition half of all XML and all XSLT is processing data, things like 
financial transactions, rather than web pages. That's under threat in the long 
term from JSON perhaps, but not from web components.

It's not clear whether you are talking about the future of client-side XSLT, or 
of XSLT generally.

I would like to think that the only thing that will lead to XSLT's decline is 
when someone invents something better, and there's no sign of that on the 
horizon. This might be wishful thinking, however; there were some excellent 
special-purpose languages in the 1980s that didn't survive because they didn't 
have a viable user and developer community, despite being ideally suited to 
their task.

Frankly, finding out what the current state of play is (how many XSLT 
developers are there?) is hard enough without even trying to predict how that 
state will change in the future.

Michael Kay
Saxonica
mike(_at_)saxonica(_dot_)com
+44 (0) 118 946 5893




On 11 Sep 2014, at 15:46, Matthew L. Avizinis matt(_at_)gleim(_dot_)com 
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

Hello all,
One of the primary uses of XSLT is transforming xml to html, it seems like.  
I don't have data handy, but based on what I've read on this list over the 
past dozen years or so, seems like a reasonable enough conclusion.
I've recently been reading about X-Tags, Polyfil, Web Components, etc., and 
tinkering with it. (for instance, x-tags.org, webcomponents.org, and 
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Tools_and_frameworks/x-tags).
It seems like pretty cool stuff and it occurs to me that by using it one 
could pretty much eliminate the use of xslt for such transformation, if I 
understand it correctly.  From my own perspective, it occurred to me that an 
xul and xslt based xml editor (from the now-hibernated Etna) and content 
management system interface I was working on for my employer until about a 
year ago, could instead be refactored using web components.
1) Do you think the web components concept will catch on widely?  2) will 
they be supported by browser developers natively eventually, do you suppose? 
and finally, 3) do you think it will as a result have a major effect on the 
use of xslt, resulting in it's decline?
Thank you in advance as always for your considered and often witty 
observations.
-- 
Regards,
Matthew L. Avizinis
Gleim Publications, Inc
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