Template System Using XML

[Michael.Kay at icl.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Williams [mailto:rob at robco-inc.com]
> I'm working on a project right now where we are converting an e-commerce
> application, attempting to do it in Java using servlets. What 
> we want to do is develop a means of using templates for the product pages 
> and the pages...
> Question is how should that impact my presentation templates? Should I
have the
> process of streaming HTML to the client involve XML directly 
> or should I just create some HTML and do simple substitutions for our 
> attributes and then stream it to the browser?
> 
I would definitely do things server-side for the time being unless you are
in control of the browser environment for all your users. It will save you a
lot of hassle. I've used Java servlets (with my SAXON library) very
successfully.

As for a templating mechanism, I don't know the answer. Most of the ways of
producing HTML from XML are data-driven rather than display-driven, i.e. you
say "do XYZ to display this data" rather than "at this place in the output
page, put data XYZ". There's a shortage of tools that are really simple for
non-programmers to use.

Mike Kay

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