Building with XSLT

The alternative to using make is to use XSLT extension functions. Naturally this will only be possible if you're using a processor for which the extensions have been implemented. The Website distribution includes extensions for Xalan and Saxon.

You can still use other processors such as xsltproc or MSXML with this method, but the file dependencies won't be tracked. Dependency tracking means the process can avoid having to reprocess XML files that have not changed. So with xsltproc, all the XML files will be processed every time it is run.

[Note]Note

If the source pages for your website are stored in several files, this method will probably will not work correctly all the time. The extension can only see if the “main” page has changed, not subsidiary pages that it (logically) depends on. If you have a complex source layout, you will probably have to use make.

  1. Create your webpages and your layout.xml file.

  2. Use XSLT to create autolayout.xml. Do this by processing your layout.xml with the autolayout.xsl stylesheet.

  3. Use XSLT to build the website: process the autolayout.xml file with the chunk-tabular.xsl stylesheet. That should build your website.

    You can use the output-root parameter to direct where the result documents are produced.