[XML-SIG] Hello

[uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]

> Another good news is that the FourThought guys have released recently
> parts of their 4Suite, including the XSLT and XPath packages. I haven't
> tried them yet, so I'm not in a position to comment whether the
> implemented subset of the W3C recommendation (PR-xslt-19991008) will
> suffice for my task. (I can only regret that James Clark's XT was written
> in Java, and not in Python. I'll tell Vincent Quint to convert him ;-)

The most significant parts of the PR that are not yet implemented are sorting, 
numbering and output specifiers.  You may have noticed that development is 
proceeding swiftly, especially since the volume of feedback, patches and 
suggestions has been growing rapidly.  We expect to round things off in a 
month or two and move on to focus on optimization.

> So, I wonder whether I really have today the Python basic bricks to perform
> the following:
> 
> 0) Define my DTD and deduce the user-friendly forms for 1).

I believe Alphaworks has a few good tools for form-generation from DTD, and 
Schemas should truly accelerate this important area.

> 1) Fill my content via user-friendly forms (a la Zope)
> 2) This content is wrapped and stored in XML.

My understanding is that you can already do this using Zope and generating XML 
(and very well, too), so rather than look for an "a la Zope", why not just use 
Zope?

> 3) The XML files are processed according to my stylesheets and the XSLT
>    processor.

As long as you don't depend on sorting, numbering and output-tweaking, and you 
don't mind that it's not yet optimized, I encourage you to look at 4XSLT.

> 4) The formatted result (currently in valid HTML 4.0) shines on my screen
>    (when I click on Zope's preview, for example)

It should be straightforward to create a python script to do take the output 
from the Zope forms, transform it with XSLT (or XT if it suits you better), 
and then launch netscape to preview the result.  Hopefully someone is working 
on Python scripting for Mozilla, which would really be a slam-dunk.

> I wish that the people at DC consider a strategical move for Zope, 
> so that this excellent product incorporates (or is interfaced with)
> the W3C standards. Damn, even the examples in Zope are not in valid HTML!
> DTML is good (it was developped before the current standards), but a shift
> or a bidirectional converter DTML<->XSL/T would be a major win.  Whether
> this is doable is another story. I don't know too much of the details yet,
> but I plan to get at full speed shortly :-)

My impression has been that even though you hear the occasional XML put-down 
from the Zope camp, Zope is embracing XML.  Hopefully XHTML and HTML 4.0 comes 
along for the ride.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji
FourThought LLC, IT Consultants
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com	(970)481-0805
Software engineering, project management, Intranets and Extranets
http://FourThought.com		http://OpenTechnology.org