> I have a web application which fetches museum records from a 
> database as 
> XML and styles them on the fly.  For an initial overview of 
> hits, I want 
> to render a set of these records as a summary list with 
> clickable links 
> to each record.  When the client clicks on one of these 
> links, I want to 
> display one of these records in detail.  Exactly the same XML, two 
> different renderings.  At present I am having to use "modes" 
> to achieve 
> the desired effect, and I'm not even thinking about other different 
> renderings that users might quite reasonably ask for.  This extension 
> function would be just the ticket.

Hello Richard,

This is exactly what modes are useful for, though posting an example of
your xml/xslt would be better to suggest something more concrete. 

I think that you are starting to use xslt in the hazy gap between
language and framework, and xslt is just a language that's good for
transforming one form of xml into another....perhaps you would be better
served by setting your XSLT processing within a larger framework; and
continue to let XSLT do what its good at, and allow something else to be
Controller of the transformation.

Even deploying SAXON as a servlet will let you do something like a GET
URL
http://www.example.com?xml=somexmlfile.xml&xslt=somexsltfile.xslt
Though I have not done this, though I have worked quite a bit with
Cocoon, AxKit with great effect. Though I would suspect that even server
side MSXML could be set up to provide a bit more abstraction, instead of
trying to force xslt to do it all.

Gl, Jim Fuller


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