Formatting Elements

[Dave Gomboc <dave at cs dot ualberta dot ca>]

Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it doesn't seem counter-intuitive
at all.  Isn't it quite similar to how a database will generate a
temporary index for the duration of an operation (e.g. join) so that the
operation can be performed more efficiently? 

Dave

> I agree, this is something that 'ought' to appear as a 
> design pattern -- perhaps with some demonstrations to 
> back it up. I've talked DTD design principles with 
> several programmers who come from a data-background or 
> are familiar with HTML (which does very little of this)
> and they are very suspicious (or incredulous) of the
> idea of adding wrapper elements. (In some cases, I 
> literally think they didn't respond because their
> initial reaction seemed impolite!)
> 
> It goes against the grain of their experience, but it 
> can literally be a huge improvement both in simplifying 
> the stylesheet and sometimes in improving response time 
> (this one is _really_ counter-intuitive). 
> 
> Sara
> 
> > Often one additional wrapper in the source XML makes all the 
> > difference in the world to the ease of processing via XSLT.
> >  To be able to sit (sorry, template match) on the wrapper, and play
> > with the children (??) of that wrapper is a piece of cake compared
> > to matching on one of many, and chasing along the axis to do 
> > something.
> > 
> > There's a design pattern here... somewhere.
> > 
> > DaveP



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