[XML-SIG] Re: [4suite-dev] incremental XSL transformations

[Uche Ogbuji]

Felix Breuer wrote:

>Hello!
>
>I am looking for a XSLT processor that supports the following mode of
>operation:
>
>Given:
>  * a source DOM tree to be transformed
>  * a XSLT stylesheet
>
>Initialization:
>  * apply the stylesheet to the source tree to obtain a result DOM tree
>  * obtain a mapping from the source tree to the result tree which maps
>    elements/text nodes in the source tree to the set of elements/text
>    nodes which have been generated from them by means of an XSLT
>    template
>
>On changes in the source DOM tree:
>  * incrementally modify the result tree accordingly
>  * update the mapping
>
>For more on such incremental transformations see:
>http://www.research.ibm.com/people/v/villard/Papiers/incXSLT.pdf
>
>Now my question is: Does 4XSLT or any other Python XSLT processor
>support such a mode of operation or could be extended to support such a
>mode of operation?
>  
>

That's a neat idea.

4XSLT does not support such a mode, nor do I know of any other processor 
at all, regardless of language, that does.  I think it could be extended 
to support this by instrumenting all the XSLT element classes to 
maintain a mapping from source node IDs to result sub-trees, and using 
clever analysis to sync these in future based on this mapping.

This is not a feature I forsee in the near future for 4Suite, but it 
sounds like it would be a neat project for someone else to take on.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Universal Business Language (UBL) - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think16.html
EXSLT by example - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-exslt.html
The worry about program wizards - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7238
Use rdf:about and rdf:ID effectively in RDF/XML - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tiprdfai.html
Keep context straight in XSLT - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipcurrent.html
Python Generators + DOM - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/01/08/py-xml.html
Simple XML Processing With elementtree - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/02/12/py-xml.html