Node:Philosophy, Previous:Scope and purpose, Up:Introduction

Philosophy behind Transbuild

Transbuild is a simple program based around some simple concepts. However, putting those simple concepts together in different ways can achieve powerful results. The simplicity also allows you to use Transbuild in conjunction with other programs. The concepts behind Transbuild are:

Use XML and XSLT as the foundation.

The XML format is simple and widely deployed. It is a presentation independent format, allowing the style of the Web site to be easily changed without needing to change the source content. In the XML world, XSLT is the standard transformation language to use.

Store content as normal files.

The content is stored as ordinary files in ordinary directories. No special database nor server is needed. This allows you to use whatever tool you want to manipulate the content - all programs support files in directories. For example: you can choose to use a text editor or a specialised XML editor to edit the content; version control can be handled using existing tools like CVS; archives can be made using tar, gzip, or zip.

Avoid storing redundant data.

Redundant data means more work for the maintainer to keep up to date and to keep it consistent. Ideally, making a single change to the site would require only a single change to the source. This is especially important when dealing with site navigation links, which must appear consistently in many pages on the site.

Generate static files.

The output produced by Transbuild is a set of ordinary files in ordinary directories. You don't need to run any special packages, databases or content management systems on the server. The files can be uploaded to any Web site. Files are also simpler for a Web server to handle: unlike on-the-fly content management systems, no processing overhead is required to serve them; Web caches can handle them better; and they are simpler to deploy.