[topicmapmail] TMs and XSL

[Robert Barta]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 11:17:46AM +0100, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Christoph Gaisbauer
> |
> | I ran the fragment-tool provided by tm4j and it is ok.
> |
> | My question is now if this is also doable in xsl??? I don't know
> | much about it, and that is why I ask. Can I extract the fragment
> | just using xsl?
> 
> It's possible to do this with XSLT provided you have the topic map in
> XTM form. However, many topic maps are written in other syntaxes (like
> LTM, HyTM, and AsTMa=), or they are stored in a database of some sort.
> For these it's quite hard to do this with XSLT.
> 
> Another problem is that XTM is *very* difficult to process with XSLT,
> in part because of how identity works in XTM. If you have a normalized
> XTM file (where all topics are referenced consistently, and all merged
> has been performed) it is much easier. It' still not easy, but at
> least it's no longer near-impossible.

Question: Is there a XTM -> CXTM conversion tool in TM4J? If so, then
all the identity/merging stuff can be captured in CXTM and the XSLT
can work off that.

But, for the record, I would not overly encourage direct XTM
processing (as Lars pointed out already). It is a bit a one-way street
and you 'park yourself' into a position where there is only
reengineering possible. Depends whether you only want a quick hack or
a longer-term solution which can grow.

\rho