XML/XSL/CSS architecture
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XML/XSL/CSS architecture
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This section describes the Nun.Me.Shu XML/XSL/CSS architecture. It is a framework to quickly and easily develop information-oriented websites with a "Zen"-like approach to web design. This section is not meant as a promotion of the Nun.Me.Shu architecture. It is an account of a personal implementation of the XML/XSL technology, which hopefully will interest other developers.
It is assumed that the reader has basic knowledge of XML and XSL development.
Summary
The Nun.Me.Shu architecture consists of a general web page DTD with corresponding XSL stylesheet, a basic CSS stylesheet, some DHTML javascript functions, a few button images, and some sample XML pages. It promotes a strict separation between content (XML), transformation and layout (XSL), and styling (CSS). It is a framework that defines the basic organization of a web site. In fact, the sample pages constitute a complete web site in themselves. The sample framework can be used as the basis for a new web site.The Nun.Me.Shu architecture relies on the existence of a deployment platform with an XSLT engine to transform the XML pages into HTML. This transformation can be done real-time or in a pre-generation batch process. Section Overview
In this section you can find the following pages:
Deployment Platform
The Nun.Me.Shu web site is a complete (and basic - no added bells or whistles) implementation of the Nun.Me.Shu architecture. It is deployed on a Java platform with Apache web server, Tomcat servlet engine and Cocoon2 XML/XSL servlet. (For more details, see the Host Environment page) The Nun.Me.Shu architecture has no platform dependent extensions and it should therefore be possible to deploy it on any platform with an XSLT engine that complies with the current XML and XSL standards.
In real life, things don't always turn out to be that simple. Even a simple upgrade of existing software occasionaly involves some tweaking of code. Early versions of XML parsers and XSL transformers for instance were much more "forgiving" with respect to implementation of the XSL specifications than recent versions.
As an example, it used to be possible to define numbers in scientific format, now this is no longer allowed (The XSL specification does not allow scientific format, but early Java implementations of the specification would define numbers with the standard Java types, and therefore scientific format could be used. Over time, custom Java functions were written to specifically handle only the number formats allowed in the XSL specification, and thus now scientific format is no longer allowed). | |
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Images in title bar (left):
: click to view a printer friendly version of a page. : click to view the XML source of a page.
View which books about XML/XSL development Amazon recommends.
Learn how Amazon.com's XML/HTTP Web Services are implemented in the Nun.Me.Shu framework.
Read web developers news headlines, collected from different news sources on the Internet.
The Nun.Me.Shu site is built entirely using XML/XSL. Pages are served by Apache's Cocoon2
 , an XML publishing framework:
XML/XSL resources:
XSL specification
xml.apache.org
www.xmltoday.com
www.xmlhack.com
www.xmltree.com
www.cocooncenter.org
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This page, and all contents, is Copyright © 2002-
Edward Maesen, San Francisco, CA, USA.
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