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Re: htmlhelp.xsl in docbook 1.50.0


Jirka, you wrote:

> Paul Grosso wrote:
> 
> > I'm getting those problems every time I try to compile htmlhelp.xsl with
> > either one of several versions of Xalan.  Has anyone used htmlhelp.xsl
> > successfully with Xalan?
> 
> htmlhelp.xsl doesn't work with Xalan as Xalan doesn't support text
> output method on chunks. (At least it didn't supported it last time I
> checked it.) You can try Saxon and xsltproc, they work without problems
> with htmlhelp.xsl and are much more faster than Xalan.

Is there any possible workaround for this issue -- an
Xalan-specific conditional that could be written into the
stylesheet to get it to work with Xalan -- or maybe a two-stage
process that could be used with Xalan?

The reason I ask (and the reason I think it might be important to
support Xalan in spite of this current deficiency in its
functionality) is that I know there are some packaged products,
with a installed user base, that use Xalan built-in for doing XSLT
transforms. So moving over the product to using Saxon or xsltproc
would mean updating the whole installed user base.

Also, I think a lot of the people using these packaged products
are likely to be Windows users, the very ones that would really
benefit from and value having built-in, off-the-shelf support in
the packaged application for generating HTML Help using the
process you've developed.

That said, I do think in the long run that developers and vendors
of packaged XML/XSL processing apps ought to be packaging Saxon
and/or xsltproc instead of Xalan. But for now, give that there
already is this big user base of people using Xalan (whether they
know it or not), it seems like it would be good to try to still
support Xalan to some degree, at least for a while.

  --Mike


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