Question

The answer to this may very well be no, as much searching has turned up nothing. I thought long ago I saw something like this, but it may all have been a mirage.

Basically, it’s so atrociously awful writing xslt out by hand. It’s not the functional paradigm that bothers me. What bothers me is the fact that it uses XML based syntax. I wonder if there’s anything available that can compile from some simpler more legible syntax into an XSLT stylesheet. Doesn’t have to have curly brackets, but the angle brackets are a bit eye boggling.

thanks.

Answer 1

You could translate S-expressions as SXML to XML. Instead of using angle brackets, this would use parentheses with a slightly less cluttered syntax:

(xsl:template (@ (name "mytemplate"))
  (xsl:if (@ (test "foo = 'bar'"))
    (xsl:value-of (@ (select "@baz")))))

Whether this is an improvement over XML depends on your personal tastes, of course.