XSLT to generate badly-formed XML

[Sébastien Bouchet]

Hi all,

no-one will be surprised by the following statement :
It is possible to use XSL to generate badly-formed XML (i.e. with 2 or more
high-level elements, for instance).
To me, it is a feature of the XSL specs, not an omission.

The problem is that some tools like Infoteria iXSLT (www.infoteria.com) are
sold as "XML->XML conversion engine using XSLT". Therefore, iXSLT, without
prompting fo your advice, adds the well-known following line to the output :
<?xml version.......>

Then, with an ad-hoc XSL stylesheet, you're able to output something like :

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<AnElement/>
<AnElementThatShouldNotBeHere/>

which is obviously nonsense. The conclusion is : one mustn't be stupid, and
must feed ixslt with a right stylesheet.

Tell me : must Infoteria (and probably other vendors) be blamed for
inserting the XML header on the top of non-XML files, or has the W3C already
got an answer to that problem ?

Apart from that, I'm pretty satisfied with it (I love the doc() function !),
and everyone should have a look at www.infoteria.com

Thanks for thinking about it

Sébastien Bouchet
sebastien.bouchet at axa.com

/* Message above expresses personal views and opinions */


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