Re: [Exist-development] New list member offering services :)

[Tony | \Zearin\ <ze...@us...>]

Hey Dan!


On Apr 9, 2010, at 11:57 AM, Dan McCreary wrote:
> Hello Tony,
>
> Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.  We really welcome any
> help documenting the eXist system, especially for beginners.
>
> > Also, I thought that XSLT was by design better suited to transform
> what is essentially the same document from one format to another,
> while XQuery is preferable for grabbing subsets of data—for example, a
> bug database.  
>
> I think the second statement is true.  XQuery is perfect for quickly
> getting the titles from a large collection of indexed XML documents.  
> But the first is somewhat debatable.  My experience is that I can
> teach people how to do an XQuery typeswitch tranforms in about an hour
> or two.  Most people prefer the syntax of XQuery over XSLT.  In my
> opinion the only reason to write in XSLT is if you must do the
> transforms in a browser.  There are no other valid reason any more to
> continue to use XSLT.  I say this after spending three years doing
> mostly XSLT and attempting to train others.  My work teaching XQuery
> is that it is much easier to learn.  Especially by people that have
> SQL or PHP experience.
>
> < … >


Oh, no problem.  Although, it makes me sad to hear that XSLT is out of
favor now.  I began learning XSL using Saxon (with XSLT 2.0) and
invested plenty of time into it.  I also found it a delightfully strange
and beautiful way to transform data.  Sad to see it fade.  :(

There was one statement you made that has me curious:


> There are no other valid reason any more to continue to use XSLT.


What did you mean by “any more”?  Specifically:

    * So it used to be preferred, but no longer?  
    * What caused this change? 
    * Does this include XSLT 2.0?  (I completely skipped XSLT 1.0 and
      learned on 2.0.  But I have heard that 2.0 made life worlds easier.)


…

I’m just curious—I’m *not* trying to debate anything, or trying to get
you to switch, etc!  :)

Just trying to understand the evolution of the tools and the evolution
of how people use those tools.  


—Tony