[microformats-discuss] Re: Educationg Others

[Brian Suda]

> > How long did it take Brian to write, test, and debug the XSL that reads the format?
> >
> > http://suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/xhtml2vcal.xsl
>
> Work in progress.
>
> -ryan

Agreed, it has taken many, many hours to build, but that is partly
because it has never been done before, we are learning and discovering
as we build. Another factor is that i don't program in XSLT for a
living (as you can probably see from the code). The idea behind
choosing XSLT rather than another language, is that once this is
finished, it can easily be re-packaged into any language that has an
XSLT processor. So if you want to do hCa* in PHP, you can create an
XSLT_PROC() include this file and you are done. I imagine it would be
just as easy in a multitude of other languages or from the command
line or scripts with 'xsltproc'.

The hCal and hCard specs have been evolving alot as we slowly solve
each problem (and there are many). With each itteration the XSLT files
lose some old code, grow new, and other bits are refactored. I imagine
it will still be awhile before i declare it no longer in Beta.

I'm not sure if you expected it to be a short time to write or a long
time, but i can say it is on the latter rather than former.

If anyone is interested in the inner workings, or developing their own
applications, there is a microformats-dev list where more specific
questions may be asked, or feel free to email me directly.

-brian

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk