Re: [xsl] Unable to get Firefox to apply XSL

Hi Michele,

Heh, well that is good to know but also too bad. But if they really are
neophytes, isn't this really the same magic as if they had learned to code
an HTML page with some CSS? In other words, I think maybe all this time
you've been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat, on the cheap -- everyone
has that hat (with that rabbit in it).

You have a hard problem but not an impossible one. I think the solution
really depends on your students and their level of sophistication. If they
really are rank beginners, they probably need to see more of the stack from
a broader perspective, before they can fully appreciate the power we get
from the layered architecture. In other words - we have pages, and we have
structured data. Whatever you take "pages" to be, they are not the same
thing. But related. Especially when we have machine assistance to help
mediate.

After all, they need to understand that at some level as well (don't they),
and the real message should be (shouldn't it) that it isn't really magic?

Practically speaking, I think you have two ways to do this - one, provide
and maintain an online resource of some kind that they could use in some
fashion, but with their own data. Or two, deploy something entirely
self-contained, which they can run on their systems. I think the latter
might be a bigger lift, but both approaches have their pros and cons.
Ideally you would have something of both.

Cheers, Wendell


On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 1:24 PM Michele R Combs mrrothen(_at_)syr(_dot_)edu <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

> Yes!!  You’ve captured it beautifully: that is precisely what I would like
> to give them :)  They are most, if not all, total coding neophytes, so this
> is their first exposure to the magic of markup languages.
>
>
>
> Michele
>
>
>
> *From:* Wendell Piez wapiez(_at_)wendellpiez(_dot_)com <
> xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 30, 2022 1:01 PM
> *To:* xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
> *Subject:* Re: [xsl] Unable to get Firefox to apply XSL
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Unfortunately none of the workarounds suggested so far have quite the
> goodness Michele needs, in a pedagogical context, where she would like her
> students to be washed in a wave of startled satisfaction at the end of
> their course, on seeing their hard-edged, pointy-bracketed code magically
> dressed for the ball by their favorite computer application, namely their
> well-worn web browser, no extension, no fussy download.
>
>
>
> Without that file system view this might still be possible, but not as
> easy.
>
>
>
> However, I am also not sure we are not already past that point. Michele,
> is this for a web-literate audience (who knows about HTML, CSS and
> servers), or are they really neophytes to markup-based information
> processing?
>
>
>
> A couple of my demos at https://wendellpiez.github.io/XMLjellysandwich/
> offer hints of what is possible today, but there is much more to be done in
> this area. I believe magic is still possible even without the
> xml-stylesheet PI over the file system. But it'll be somewhat different.
>
>
>
> Regards, Wendell
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 12:32 PM Dean Fiala dfiala(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com <
> xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
>
> Check out Lightsail on AWS
>
>
>
> https://aws.amazon.com/free/compute/lightsail/
>
>
>
> Quick and cheap path to getting a simple web server set up -- leaving the
> fun part of creating a web app that takes a stylesheet and xml file and
> does the transformation. For that you can use your choice of Ruby on Rails,
> Python, java, etc. -- I bet with a little google foo you can probably even
> find a working example to get you started.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 12:21 PM Michele R Combs mrrothen(_at_)syr(_dot_)edu <
> xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
>
> That would be great, but unfortunately it's far beyond my capabilities --
> I wouldn't even know where to start to set up something like that :(  But
> maybe I can teach myself between now and next time we teach the class!
>
> Michele
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Norm Tovey-Walsh ndw(_at_)nwalsh(_dot_)com <
> xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 12:18 PM
> To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
> Subject: Re: [xsl] Unable to get Firefox to apply XSL
>
> > I suppose I could give them Saxon and a pre-written batch file so all
> > they have to do is double-click; saxon is pretty self-contained.
> One way forward for this sort of thing is to pull the infrastructure onto
> your end. Setup a web form where they can upload the file (or the
> stylesheet, or both, I’m not sure which bit the students are working on),
> transform it form them, and send back the results.
>
> For a few students with small files, it’s not an objectively large task to
> setup a server that can do small transformations, but of course it depends
> a little bit on what infrastructure you have available.
>
> I’ve seen some very successful tutorials that were entirely “cloud based”
> like this. It doesn’t work for everything, but it does work for some things
> and it might possibly work for you here.
>
> Good luck!
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>
> --
> Norman Tovey-Walsh <ndw(_at_)nwalsh(_dot_)com>
> https://nwalsh.com/
>
> > Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they
> > understand everything too soon.--Pope
>
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>
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-- 
...Wendell Piez... ...wendell -at- nist -dot- gov...
...wendellpiez.com... ...pellucidliterature.org... ...pausepress.org...
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