Re: DOCBOOK: DocBook XSL: <xsl:variable> and <xsl:param>

[Dave Makower <davemak@iclick.com>]

At 8:43 AM -0500 3/24/00, Norman Walsh wrote:
>Uh, maybe. Sounds plausible anyway. But the DocBook stylesheets are
>highly modular and I'm not clear on what the scope of xsl:param would
>be in the case where they're used in param.xsl which is included in
>docbook.xsl. I probably ought to check...

As I understand it, param.xsl provides default settings for a whole 
bunch of parameters.  Right now, they're variables, which, in XSLT's 
definition of "variable", basically means "constants".  Although XT 
seems to let you override their settings from the outside, I don't 
think this behavior is standard.

If we assume that standard XSLT processors will be used, then the 
procedure for parameterizing the behavior of DocBook XSL stylesheets 
(other than actually editing the templates themselves) is essentially 
to edit the param.xsl file.

However, if param.xsl were to change so that it actually contained 
parameters (xsl:param) instead of variables (xsl:variable) then you 
could leave param.xsl as it is, and pass in values just to override 
the defaults.  You could then easily use a single installation of the 
stylesheets and have dynamically different output depending on the 
needs for a given invocation of the processor.

I suppose that I should now put my money where my mouth is and try 
changing them all to xsl:param to see if it works.  I'll try to get 
to that today, as soon as I download 1.9 and integrate our local 
modifications.

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| Dave Makower                                 <davemak@iclick.com> |
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