-*- mode: text -*- 

AJAXSLT -- AN XSL-T PROCESSOR LIBRARY FOR AJAX APPLICATIONS


INTRODUCTION

 AJAXSLT is an implementation of XSL-T in JavaScript, intended for use
 in fat web pages, which are nowadays referred to as AJAX
 applications. Because XSL-T uses XPath, it is also an implementation
 of XPath that can be used independently of XSL-T.

 Both XPath and XSL-T are built into some of the modern browsers,
 however not in all. This library runs on many browsers, including
 those that don't support XSLT adaequately or at all, which is why the
 library was written in the first place. (See BROWSER COMPATIBILITY,
 below.)


CONFORMANCE

 A few features that are required by the XSLT and XPath standards were
 left out. They are marked in the source code using alert()
 statements. TODO(mesch): list them here and explain.


BROWSER COMPATIBILITY

 The library works in these browsers:
 
 - Firefox/1.0

 - Internet Explorer/6.0

 - Safari/1.2, Safari/1.3, Safari/2.0

 - Opera/7.5, Opera/8.0

 - Omniweb TODO(mesch): verify this.


Remarks:

 Safari/1.2 JavaScript is very slow, and apply larger stylesheets
 ususally results in Safari freezing for a few seconds, and showing
 the beach ball.

 Safari/2.0 has XSL-T built in, but it is not exposed to JavaScript,
 but is only applied to XML documents that have a stylesheet
 declaration when they are loaded.

 Internet Explorer exposes XSLT via the transformNode() method on the
 XML DOM. However, this is not avaiable if ActiveX is disabled.

 Firefox exploses XSLT via the XSLTProcessor() object, however XPath
 is not exposed in the DOM. TODO(mesch): verify this.


REFERENCES

 [XPATH] XPath Specification <http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116>.
 [XSLT] XSL-T Specification <http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116>.
 [ECMA] ECMAScript Language Specification
    <http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm>.