James Cummings wrote (re Peter Robinson's remarks on dynamic extraction):
Is this necessarily the case? Couldn't you simply output these fragments
as
individual page files - so only having to do the process once? I agree
with
you whole-heartedly that XSLT is problematic for choosing to display from
one
arbitrary point to another arbitrary point in the XML, but your points
aren't
arbitrary. Page breaks will be the same each time, so I don't see the
need to
do this dynamically. Store your full versions of Hengwrt, and also store
files
created for each page, searching the former, but displaying the latter.
Just
because we *can* dynamically pull out a single page from the whole of a
large XML
file doesn't mean we *have* to.
--------
Maybe we don't *have" to, but we certainly should. If we cannot handle such a task dynamically, then we are forced into adopting one of several clunky solutions. James suggests that we introduce redundancy into the mix. But in so doing, we now are faced with issues of synchronization. What happens when changes are are made to the document? Any change made to the "master" must be reflected in all derived versions. So one must either edit each of the generated versions to include the change (which will almost guarantee the loss of synchronization) or re-generate the reduced, and redundant, versions of the document after any change. Again, loss of synchronization is bound to result (as it relies on a human being to remember to do this). Indeed, any system that relies on the proper functioning of human beings will surely fail at some point.
I agree with Peter Robinson. A dynamic approach is always best.
/**************************************** * Michael L. Norton, Ph.D. * Computer Science Dept. * ISAT/CS #209 * MSC 4103 * James Madison University * Harrisonburg, VA 22807 * (540)568-2777 * nortonml@jmu.edu ***************************************/