Re: [xml-dev] Documenting XSLT

** Reply to message from Steve Ball <> on Wed, 30 Oct 2002
06:48:46 +1100

Another solution would be to use a literate programming tool, like xmLP
(http://www.xmLP.org/), which keeps the documentation with the XSLT, but
nonetheless outside of the code.  Zarella Rendon gave a talk about this at this
year's Extreme.

	Cheers,
		Tony.

> > We've discussed documentation work-arounds in XSLT 1.0 on and off for
> > years -- make the documentation elements extension elements and
> > include an empty xsl:fallback; run the stylesheet through a
> > de-documentation-izer before using it; use XML comments with XML
> > inside that you get out via disable-output-escaping.
> >
> > None of these is exactly ideal.
> 
> As part of that discussion, one suggestion I made (which
> seemed to get lost in the noise...) was to extend the
> whitespace stripping mechanism instead of introducing
> a specific documentation element.  That is, as well as
> stripping whitespace from a stylesheet the processor
> could be told to also strip elements in certain
> namespaces as well.  That way, documentation could be
> made to disappear from the stylesheet before execution
> begins.  Since this is a general mechanism, stylesheet
> designers made find it useful for other purposes too.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
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MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
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