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Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

Posted by michael on from the anything-you-can-do-i-can-do-better dept.

An anonymous contributor writes "XML.com just published an article titled Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL written by Michael Day and Håkon Wium Lie. The article was written in response to Norm Walsh's claim that CSS will never fix [printing]. Did you hear me? CSS will never fix it!. The article shows how a 100-line CSS style sheet gives you the same formatted version of W3C's Webarch as the 1000-line XSL style sheet by using Prince."

4 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. Tru Dat by Foofoobar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree. CSS is definitely better... but when you have to rely upon IE to update itself to the latest standard (much less a standard that is 5 years old) it becomes a bit tedious.

    Frankly, I think the W3C should act like supreme overlord and take a bullwhip to all browser developers who can't stay up to standard.

    I can just see Bill Gates bent over and bare assed in a W3C hazing ritual saying 'Thank you sir! May I have another?'

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    1. Re:Tru Dat by dubious9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree. CSS is definitely better...

      For some things. XSL is much more widely scoped, (from the article), "Turing-complete language which, in principle, can be used for all programming tasks and is particularly suited for document transformations."

      In the case of document presentation CSS is indeed a challenger, but mostly if the document is static. XSL has loops, branching, conditionals, and templates (akin to functions). If you have a report with some complex logic, ie. if this number is below a threshold, print this warning, otherwise show this table. Of course you could always do all transformations and logic before the final rendering step, but in a lot of cases it's easier to do it purely XSL. Yes, you could always bring Java-script or some other html-based functionality, but that's more than just CSS.

      Furthermore, there was probably a number a transformations you've already done to get the data that you need. A more suiting comparision would be with XSL:FO and CSS, but again, they both have their place. Furthermore you can imbed graphics with SVG and tools like FOP will automatically render them. To say that CSS is definitely better is naive.

      As in most other times when people compare languages, each has it strengths, and straight up conclusions (CSS is better!) is most often an apples to oranges comparison.

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  2. XML/XHTML as a layout language? by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As the old saying goes ... those who do not understand TeX are doomed to continually re-invent it ... badly.

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  3. XSLT is for transformation by Pascal+Sartoretti · · Score: 5, Informative
    As an XSLT developer, I agree that CSS is simpler and more readable. However: the "T" in XSLT stands for "transformation". It means that you can do things like generating a table of contents, a table of figures, etc. which would not be possible with just CSS.

    The bottom line (at least for me): if you can do it with CSS, do it with CSS. But there are some cases where you will need XSLT.