It's good to see more real-world applications of XSLT in browsers. There were some other excellent examples before the current discussion about removing XSLT support from browsers. Here is an easy one to get started with: https://xsl-website.widloski.com/
Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
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Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#22Nice one! Although it seems that the engineers at the different browser vendors are committed to remove XSLT due to reasons outlined here [1]. It's a shame these Discussions got so heated, but that's just the nature of the internet, I guess.
[1]: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523#issuecomment-318...
//Edit: Rephrased "PRs" to "Discussions".
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#23Lighthouse score 0 .. I wonder what are implications on SEO.
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#24I guess I just don't get the point. In order for the page to load it needed to make four round trips on the server sequentially which ended up loading slower than my bloated javascript spa framework blog on a throttled connection. I don't really see how this is preferential to html, especially when there is a wealth of tools for building static blogs. Is it the no-build aspect of it?
The appeal of XML is semantic. I think about things in a certain way. I write the text the way I think, inventing XML elements and structure as I go. Then I transform it into whatever. This obscures the semantic, but the transformation is transient, merely to present this to the user.
To do this dynamically I serve the content as I wrote it with a single processing instruction that refers to a stylesheet. This is elegant, isn't it? It is less efficient than a static site, but not that different from a typical HTML: HTML, CSS, JS. It is also trivial to change it to build statically (or to embed all the resources and XSLT into individual XML files, although this would be strange.)
And if browsers supported alternative stylesheets it would be trivial to provide alternative renderings at the cost of one processing instruction per rendering. Why don't they? Isn't this puzzling? I think it is even in the specification.
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#25Haven't seen this much interest in XML/XSLT in 20 years.
Fortunately! It was cool to do the easy things, but then you had monstruous path expressions, and all sort of programmatical drama.. Pfff...
did you know that XSLT was shown to be Turing complete ? https://staff.emu.edu.tr/zekibayram/Documents/papers/XSLT_Tu...
On the other side, I find XML/XSD still much better than JSON. JSON is way too simple...
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#26I guess I just don't get the point. In order for the page to load it needed to make four round trips on the server sequentially which ended up loading slower than my bloated javascript spa framework blog on a throttled connection. I don't really see how this is preferential to html, especially when there is a wealth of tools for building static blogs. Is it the no-build aspect of it?
The appeal of XML is semantic. I think about things in a certain way. I write the text the way I think, inventing XML elements and structure as I go. Then I transform it into whatever. This obscures the semantic, but the transformation is transient, merely to present this to the user. To do this dynamically I serve the content as I wrote it with a single processing instruction that refers to a stylesheet. This is ele…
I get it, but if we're building things for others to use the elegance of our solutions doesn't matter. What matters is things like the efficiency, the experience of using it, not writing it. And I think browsers should serve the end user, not the developer. If we sacrifice some elegance for security that seems like a win for the user. Even if we lose some of the elegance of the abstraction, that's not what it's about.
Of course everyone is free to create things they want with their own abstractions, but let's not pretend that it's an optimal solution. Elegance and optimal are often at odds.
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#27Lighthouse score 0 .. I wonder what are implications on SEO.
Probably abysmal
Since xslt is built dynamically in the DOM most crawlers don’t build the site and pick up the metadata.
Although I’m not convinced chasing SEO is a useful endeavor any more https://housefresh.com/beware-of-the-google-ai-salesman/
I wonder if AI crawlers would have the same problem and pass over the site
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#28Lighthouse score 0 .. I wonder what are implications on SEO.
Or just end user experience...
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#29It's nice to see this. Things used to be simple! (XSLT itself should've been simpler of course). BTW, as I commented on earlier HN threads re: removal of XSLT support from HTML spec and browswers, IBM owns a high-performance XSLT implementation that they may want to consider contributing to one or more browsers. (It is a JIT that generates machine code directly from XSLT and several other data transformation and poli…
I think it would be very unlikely browsers would use a jit engine for xslt. They are removing it because they are afraid of the security footprint. A JIT engine would make that footprint much worse.
Not necessarily. The security issues are with the libxml implementation, a different one might be more secure even with JIT. That's part of what makes the whole situation so ridiculous.
Re: Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be very unlikely browsers would use a jit engine for xslt. They are removing it because they are afraid of the security footprint. A JIT engine would make that footprint much worse.
Not necessarily. The security issues are with the libxml implementation, a different one might be more secure even with JIT. That's part of what makes the whole situation so ridiculous.
Emphasis on might be. Finding out whether it actually is is not a trivial process.