Processing Templates in XSL
By Michael Floyd
The year is 2002. It may be just three years from now, but in terms of Web years it's at least a paradigm shift away. Your cell phone rings and you answer it. On the other end of the line is your Web site with details on a real-estate contract, and it requires your immediate attention. The message is relayed in a monotone voice, but already the phone's LCD screen is filling with data and a menu is appearing to guide you through the salient points of the contract. Ultimately, you authorize the transaction and attach your digital signature. You've just purchased that dream property, contingent upon the sale of your current home.
Now, back at the office, you jump onto the Net and log in to your home's LAN. A realtor is coming to show your home, so you select options to increase the temperature of the house, turn on the inside lights, and play some light classical music. You smile and say to yourself, "There, the house shows better that way."
This promise of Internet appliances is not new. However, pointing to the incompatibilities among browsers, some in the press are speculating that these wired devices will be accessible only to the few companies with enough cash and coders to support the various standards for individual appliances. Certainly, there are debates over how devices should communicate with the network. But for delivering data, the answer is simple: XSL transformations.
I've already talked about the benefits of transforming XML into HTML. In May I introduced a tool set that lets you map XSL style sheets to specific browser types.
