Check-in

Not a technical post, but a personal update. I promised over a week ago.

I’ve been exceptionally busy at work, we’re beginning to finish up a much needed, much discussed by librarians, redesign of PubMed. We’ve put a ton of user interaction effort into this project, as well as a good sprinkling of graphic design (watch out, I even did some parts!) I think people will be really positive about these new changes.

[Just for the record, if someone happens to stumble upon this from the librarian community, yes, release date is still end of summer, and yes, there will be a Beta period, so no need to worry about a short timeline to update your class or instructional slides. We do listen!]

It’s also been exciting that we’ve brought a few new people on board. Always exciting to have new hires, despite the fact that it’s a lot of work… and all of the trainings I have to do.

What else… I’m planning on attending the DelveUI masterclasses this week in Brooklyn. It will be interesting to see what some of the heads of state have to say about the field. I’m a little excited, this masterclass format isn’t the usual boring no-content fluff that you hear at most conferences. I get the feeling that there will actually be code present! My thanks to the lovely Jina “Sushi & Robots” Bolton for the opportunity for the free ticket.

I’ve been reading… way too many things. I’ve been reading Learning jQuery 1.3, jQuery UI 1.6, and jQuery in Action and you’ll see the reviews of those two books very soon. (Can you tell that we’ve switched to jQuery at NCBI?) I’m a little behind with that reading, but I’ve been working hard on other things. Additionally, I went on an Amazon spree, and started reading Programming the Semantic Web, An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists, To Mock a Mockingbird, 101 Things I learned in Architecture School, Code Complete 2. Last but not least, I’ve also been reading any photography book that I can get my hands on.

Yes, that is a lot of books, and I haven’t had much time for them. I’ve been working hard at work, and I want to relax a bit when I come home. Once summer ends, things will return to a slightly more regular pace. I’ve been learning so much on the job, that I’m not very worried about falling behind in reading.

My XSLT Toolbox – 5 Favorite XSLT Books

I love reading programming books, especially to learn a new programming language. Learning XSLT, I read a large number of books, as there are quite a few available. The quality of the XSLT books struck me as particularly all over the place, some were quite good while others weren’t even worth the time to skim. So I’m throwing together a simple list of my current collection of XSLT references, which happened to be my favorites of the bunch. These books are all geared towards specific audiences… beginners, advanced, etc, so I included their audiences.

• XSLT – Mastering XML Transformations, Doug Tidwell
  This is my favorite XSLT book. Mr. Tidwell did a great job of combining an introduction to the language, a tutorial on how to write XSLTs, and a reference all into one book. On top of that, I found it to be written in the clearest, most conversational style I’ve found in many a programming book. I find this book covers 90% of my day-to-day needs, and when I forget how something works, this book usually answers my questions. (Plus, hey, you can get the 1.0 version for about $3 used.)
• XSLT: Programmer’s Reference, Michael Kay
  If Mr. Tidwell’s book covers 90%, this book covers all 100%, and then some. Mr. Kay (who wrote the Saxon processor, if you weren’t aware) presents what amounts to an annotated specification in book form. One of my co-workers calls this book the XSLT dictionary, and I can’t argue with that. This book is probably best for advanced programmers.
• XSLT and XPATH on the Edge, Jeni Tennison
  Once you’ve got the basics of the language down, you’ve got to use it to write real-world code. I found this book helps to smooth down the rough edges of working with the language. This book requires a mid-level familiarity with the language.
• XSLT Cookbook, Second Edition, Salvatore Mangano
  I reach for this book whenever I’ve got to do something weird. I use it to find the solution to some odd edge case, or for my “can I do this with XSLT” questions. The book covers everything from faking regular expressions, to set operations on different node-sets, to functional programming with XSLT. I don’t use it often, but it’s like gold when I do. This book is mostly for advanced users.
• XPath and XPointer, John E. Simpson
  The content in this book is totally covered in each of the other books, and it isn’t really XSLT, because it only covers XPath. But this book is my simple reference to 90% of the XPath questions I have. It is a nice little book that I could live without, but it certainly makes my life easier having it around. I think new users will likely get the most out of this book. (Another book that can be had for about $3 used.)

(For disclosure, I did make the links amazon referrals. I feel kinda weird, but figured why not. I don’t expect any results, but if I got some, it’d go straight to buying a new book.)