Is XSL holding us back?
Posted on December 19, 2007
Category Talk DITA to me, Tools | 3 Comments
In looking at technology to support DITA, it’s easy to see that there have been some great advances in the functionality of XML editors. The vendors have added specialized functions and capabilities to make it easy to create topics and DITA maps. Content management systems have kept pace … pretty much every CM system that supports component content comes in a DITA version. And like the editors, they offer specialized functionality for things like creating maps from existing topics or importing maps and files from outside the CMS system. Most of the CMs and many of the tools also have the DITA Open Toolkit integrated to give you the ability to both create content and publish. But here’s where the development has not been as extensive. None of the tools have any specialized functionality to help you customize the Toolkit.
While XML and DITA implementations continue to grow, I think the lack of really user-friendly tools to help the average department create customized XSL stylesheets is really holding a lot of people back from committing to DITA or XML. The DITA Toolkit does of lot of the work for you. XSL is quite extensive and the ToolKit does some clever things to take DITA maps and topics and create output. But despite the efforts of the developers to make things as easy as possible to customize, it still requires you to get into the XSL to make your changes. Options for tools are limited. You can buy an XML IDE (Integrated Development Environment), like XML Spy or similar, but these are primarily developer tools that can help people who know how to code in XSL do it fast.
So if you are looking at DITA or other XML tools, make sure you evaluate both the output capabilities and your ability to modify the output. Your job is to create usable information in an effective format, so make sure you will be able to get what you need out of the tools. You might need to learn XSL.
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I think most CMSes just integrate the DITA Open Toolkit and then expect that to do the rest of the publishing work. What exactly does “integrating the toolkit” mean?
As far as I know, part of what the Idiom plugin for the Open toolkit can be used for is better integration. The plugin parameterizes a lot of different output options for the XSLs. These output options could be integrated into the CMS and be loaded during the publish by the CMS. The CMS vendor should know XSL and if their users have a new case that hasn’t been encountered yet, the vendor can modify the XSL and interface appropriately.
The Open Toolkit is a “reference implementation” for DITA, and since every user of it is going to have their own corporate style guides and output requirements, customization will be necessary, but in my opinion it is up to the CMS vendor to provide that XSL customization from their user’s requirements.
Another option is to outsource the XSL development so the CMS user and/or CMS vendor don’t have to worry about it.
dan
I have to learn XSL, not that I want to though. I would rather use a drag-and-drop or wysiwyg friendly tool, because I am not a developer
~Darryl
Steve,
I agree with your statement that XSL is quite powerful. As you point out, learning it isn’t for everyone. Our ePublisher product with DITA support lessens the impact for users focused on style and behavior changes. Users can leverage the power of XSL without dropping to a command-line to configure their publishing task.
Ben