Templating System: Simple and Complex

Simple

The simple templating system will use SimpleXML to do the same thing as the XSL functions. It will take the xml file and the style xml file and uses the style xml file to transform the page xml file. It is simpler because the template author doesn’t have to know anything about XSLT or XML. It will also be simpler for me, since basic XML is a lot like HTML and every coder should know about that. It will be about the same documentation also and still allow me to add XForms.

Complex

The complex templating system will use the XSL and for loading the XML and XSLT file. It will be a little bit more complex on the template author but will at least have XPath and other XML capability that the XML author is used to.

Template Class

Their will be two template classes that will be used for either the simple or complex templating system. It will be up to the programmer to choose which one depending on the type of template they will be using.

Possible Problems

With two different possible designs it will be almost impossible to create a system to tell which skin is what type, unless I have a third file that has some xml to tell what type of file it is. Since I would have to do that, I could also have some other information:

  1. Author Name
  2. Author Web Site Address
  3. Author Web Site Name
  4. Name of Template
  5. Template Type

This causes another problem of needing file to tell what the other file is. That is pretty damn sad, if you think about it.

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