Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook transformation by browsers' xslt engine

docbook-apps message

Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] DocBook transformation by browsers' xslt engine

From: Szabó Árpád Zoltán<szabo.arpad.zoltan@gmail.com>

To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org

Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:01:09 +0100

Well, it's fast. I mean I hope it will be still fast, when not my simple xslt but the one for arbitrary documents is used. Network response time can be time consuming too (many hits on server, if that's a factor, on the other hand, there's the extra bandwidth required to download the whole file, certainly). People are trained for multitasking when they use a browser, just look at the tabs. And with all the flash "Loading", we're pretty much getting used to just wait for a longer task and doing something else for that time. And in response, we expect that when our attention is there, the application really take care for us.

You're certainly right, this can be achieved by the method you explain too, I can't really say anything against that. Of course There are some things to think on finding the right amount of pre-catched material, and how to select it. But it can be solved using the table of contents, or the backward-forward links as a data source.

Another potential benefit of having the transformation in the browser should be embeddability. That's not without development demand either, but I can imagine that the same effect can be reached the way Google Ads does it: the user inserts some javascript into the webpage, and the content is there, inside a box, with inner navigation, without ever leaving the page.

Of course, this can be achieved with the method you descripted too, given that the html files we're talking about, don't contain anything just what has to be between the <body></body>tags, and the table of contents is a convenient enough resource for the javascript to rely on.

Yours,
Arpad

2010.03.12. 20:09 keltezéssel, Sam Fischmann írta:

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This is really interesting and looks pretty cool, but I am curious what the advantages are of making the browser perform the transformation, instead of:

Doing a chunked HTML transformation beforehand and putting the HTML files on a server.

Using javascript to download and cache the HTML files locally on the client when the user loads your page.

Then you have the advantage of a local cache without the disadvantage of worrying about transform time, browser XSLT compatibility, transforming arbitrary documents, and difficulty of adapting the DocBook stylesheets to work in this special use case. The plain old HTML linking mechanism would work fine, too, provided that you hijack click events to perform a lookup in your local cache before requesting the file from the server.

-Sam