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Who should you put in charge of your style sheets-designers or developers?
new element type or altering an existing element, you may have to modify many style sheets. In the Web example, even a minor modification to just one document type means we'd have to update nearly 50 style sheets.
There are two ways to solve this problem. The first is through the use of project-oriented tools or XML development environments. The second is to create your own style sheet management tool using a scripting and an XML API like the DOM.
Tools Should Support XSLT
Despite all of the new XML tools hitting the market, there's a distinct lack of support for XSLT. I have found some support in several tools, but not the level of support for which I'm looking. Specifically, I'd like to see a tool that lets me browse document, schema, and (most importantly) XSLT collections. I'd also like the tool to assist me in creating XSLT documents.
Among the tools that you might expect to support XSLT are the XML editing and authoring tools. Tools like XMetaL (from SoftQuad) and XML Spy (from Altova) support the creation of style sheets, but are geared toward authoring single documents and validating them against a schema. Support for creating style sheets is particularly good in XML Spy. For example, it recognizes style sheets in the environment and employs syntax-directed highlighting, which color highlights various element types and attributes, making the document easier to read. The editor also pops up a list of XSLT element types, letting you create your style sheets quicker.
XMetaL 2.0's support for XSLT is much less advanced. The editing environment views an XSL document as any other XML document, but doesn't support XSLT directly. In fact, to incorporate style sheets, you must create XMetaL macros, which are scripting extensions built into the product. XMetaL 2.1 is due by the time this column reaches print, so XMetaL may have improved support for XSLT. However, neither XMetaL nor XML Spy let you maintain large style sheet collections.
One tool, thinkXML, which I covered a couple of months back (see "XML@)Large," May 2001), does seem to recognize and partially address the problem. thinkXML is a solid product. It includes a management...