Hi Marsha,

disclaimer: i am not using EAD, I am using XSLT in other contexts.

i think you can teach yourself XSLT. I did it and I am not a
programmer either. It took some days to get my head around the
principles behind XSLT.  A book helps. (Not sure if you're referring
to Jeni's book or her websites.)

Will you be writing XSLT1?  I find XSLT2 easier to learn, but you need
to learn whatever your toolchain is already using.

Also, did you already set up a simple test environment where you can
execute your xsls and do some transformations?

If you want I can tell you how I do it offlist.

best
maurice



On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Marsha Maguire <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hello, all,
>
> I'm a non-programmer who needs to use XSLT to do some conversions of
> selected fields in a batch of saved MARCXML records to EAD inventory
> descriptions (usually c02-level descriptions).. I've been trying to teach
> myself *basic* XSLT (using Jeni Tennison's Beginning XSLT book and a few
> websites), but most basic XSLT teaching resources understandably focus on
> converting XML to HTML. A lot of the books and online XSLT resources are out
> of date, too, or they're intended for programmers and way over my head (I
> have no idea how to use variables and parameters, but I can probably handle
> simple "if" and "choose" instructions).
>
> I'm also trying to convert to simple EAD inventory descriptions a batch of
> files that were imported from a local database system as complex XML files
> with a very deep hierarchical structure. For these, I just need to pull out
> a little data, but of course, the data I need is many levels deep. Can
> anyone recommend basic and reasonably current forums or other websites that
> offer assistance with basic XSLT? I don't need to produce elegant, robust
> XSLT -- I'd be thrilled to be able to come up with clunky templates or
> for-each/value-of instructions that did the job -- I could strive for
> elegance later! I'd love to attend an SAA XSLT workshop but haven't been
> able to make it to any of them. Have any online or in-print instructional
> tools from those or any other reasonably pertinent workshops become
> available?
>
> Is anyone else in the same boat -- are there other non-programmers out there
> who need to do some basic XML-to-EAD/XML conversions?
>
> Many thanks!
>
> Marsha Maguire
> [log in to unmask]
>
>