Saturday, August 04, 2007
About XML + XSL
I developed the XML format for the Miis with two things in mind: Ease of use and scalability. With XML, you get a text format which is easy to read and modify. That in itself makes the format easy to use. People can easy take a Mii XML file and modify it to their own liking using a simple text editor.
With scalability I wanted something that I wouldn't have to worry about modifying continuously over time should the need arise. As a result I took into consideration what possibilities the XML format might need to account for. One of those was the pie in the sky possibility that the Mii Editor might one day also include a
Then you have XSL – a style sheet format for XML. The Mii XML uses an XSL style sheet to convert the XML into an HTML page for viewing your Mii XML files. Unfortunately, because of security restrictions, an XML file on your hard drive or a different domain should not be able to access the XSL style sheet used on the MiiEditor.com web site. As a result, this almost makes having the XSL useless as I didn't figure people would copying the XSL for their own use and modifying the XML to point to their version (which you can do to make it work), but I figured I would keep it around in case it was ever needed. Similarly, the XSL transformation to HTML uses a simple version of the Mii Editor to display Mii characters in a preview. Because I thought no one was using the XSL I never kept up with updating this version which currently breaks the preview.
Apparently I was wrong.
So in the next day or so, I will try to update the preview file so it will work with XML + XSL. I don't know how well it will work since a few things have changed since it did work, but we'll see what can be done about it. Thanks.
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