XSL and XML

[PedroES]

Hi

I'm still trying to learn XML, and my question is:
- To use XML to make a web page, the browser must have some way of validating the document's contents, right ? Browser will have built in validation schemas ? And to control the way the document is shown, is XSL gonna be used ? So if I decide to write a web page in XML, I must also make some presentation document in XSL ?

Thanks in advance
Pedro


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[Lothar Haensler]

>the browser must have some way of validating the document's contents, right ?
>Browser will have built in validation schemas ?
I don't think so. Browser only check, if the XML document is well-formed, not its validity according to a schema.
I think, at the present time there aren't many validating browsers out there.

>And to control the way the document is shown, is XSL gonna be used ?
Yes, you can use XSL to control the display of an XML document.
You can also rely on the browser's default presentation of an XML document or use Cascading Style Sheets with certain limitations.

[PedroES]

Let's imagine that we are in a (not so) distant future and XML is widespread. It will, in the long term, replace HTML right ? So what will the futuristic browsers of that time use to present the contents of the XML documents ? CSS ? XSL ? If they use XSL, that means we will need to have a XSL file along with the XML document ?

Thanks in advance
Pedro

__________________________________________________________

Please always rate my answers, or else I'll not know if I'm being useful
Please try to answer my questions, or else I'll never learn

You can contact me at esanto@yahoo.com

[Lothar Haensler]

>It will, in the long term, replace HTML right ?
I don't think so. XML is for data, HTML is for presentation.
There is also XHTML, an XML representation for the HTML syntax.

>So what will the futuristic browsers of that time use to present the contents of the XML documents ? CSS ? XSL ?
I think XSL.

>If they use XSL, that means we will need to have a XSL file along with the XML document ?
I think so.

[sharma-kapil]

hi,[i]
XSL is still in developing stage so most of the browsers don't support it yet. So it will be better to use CSS with XML docs for the presentation part since CSS is almost developed fully and is well supported by the popular browsers like Mozilla and IE. IE can also check the wellformedness of your docs and you can check it by testing a small Hello XML doc with it. The best tool so far I have encountered for xml parsing and editing is xmlspy available at http://www.xmlspy.com/
[b]
GoodLuck

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[Lothar Haensler]

>XSL is still in developing stage so most of the browsers don't support it yet.

Sorry to disagree.
Yes, XSL may be undergoing future changes. That's true with most "languages", even CSS and HTML and so on.
MS offers an MSXML component that supports most features of the XSL standard.

CSS is not a true alternative to XSL, because CSS only supports formatting. XSL offers a lot more, e.g. rearranging contents, sorting and so on.

[sharma-kapil]

But I think that CSS is become much more stable now, and XSL will take take time to become more stable as was the case of c & c++ a few years back. Though you are right that XSL is much stronger than CSS but we have to keep in mind the stabilty also. I appreciate your thoughts.

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[twinrow]

XSL can be compiled server side (using ASP with the XML DOM), so the browser the client is using is irrelevant so long as the server has the proper dll's.