Re: [docbook-apps] Standardizing stylesheets PIs (Was: Re: [docbook-apps] Current date?)

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.com>]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:46:31PM +0200, Jirka Kosek wrote:
> Rune Enggaard Lausen wrote:
> 
> > If you are willing to rely on EXSLT support in the XSLT processor, you
> >   could do like I did in our XSL-FO customization layer. It works with
> > Saxon and xsltproc. Don't know about Xalan.
> 
> It brings interesting idea to me. What about adding support for some
> timestamp PI into stylesheets. For example one could write something
> like:
> 
> <pubdate><?dbtimestamp format="M-D-Y h:m:s"?></pubdate>
> 
> or
> 
> <releaseinfo>This document was generated at
> <?dbtimestamp?></releaseinfo>
> 
> and stylesheet will take care of expanding <?dbtimestamp into correct
> value according to format specifier. Placing timestamp into document is
> commonly requested feature so it might be usefull to have it
> standardized and don't force users to investigate their ad-hoc
> solutions.
> 
> Norm what do you think about this idea?
> 
> It reminds me also another commonly requested feature. Although it is
> not good from pure semantical point of view, one is time to time forced
> to place manual line-break or page-break into document. Wouldn't be
> reasonable to standardize PIs for this also? 
> 
> What other folks and stylesheet developers (I'm CCing this message)
> think? I can take care of implementing these new PIs and also write some
> documentaion which will summarize all PIs supported by stylesheets.

I think this is a great idea, and would prove very
useful to many people.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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                                            email: bobs@sco.com