Web Design Customization

From ReOS Documentation Wiki

ReOS is ready to take any web design you want. ReOS uses XSL Transformation stylesheets for presenting any web design.

XSL Transformations provides a handy means for converting XML data to HTML pages, allowing you to store your content in its most flexible form and still have complete control over its display in the user's browser.

ReOS is basically a php script that outputs XML instead of HTML. Therefore we do not directly generate HTML but take an extra step of saving dynamic data in XML. In order to create HTML for the browser, we hand over the XML data to an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) processor, which, aside from the dynamic XML data, takes a static XSLT stylesheet.

Following the rules defined in the stylesheet, the processor converts the XML into HTML. After the conversion the HTML document will be sent to the browser and displayed there. With this approach we separate the programmer, who is responsible for the creation of the Phps and the acquisition of the dynamic data, and the graphics artist, who maintains the transformation logic in the XSLT style sheet. Only the kind of data needs to be agreed upon.

Then, if XSL Transformations (XSLT) is a declarative XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents into other XML /XHTML/HTML documents, first of all, you need your XML document. ReOS generates a XML document for each http request. You can force ReOS to write XML output document to a file changing application variable _XMOUTPUT2FILE to 1 from administration menu. Then ReOS will write tpl/reos/output.xml file for each http request.

Then you can start applying your graphic design to ReOS by having your own XSLT stylesheet or modifing an existing one. File /tpl/<theme_name>/nav2.xml defines XSLT stylesheet to use by ReOS (Find <xslt> node in nav2.xml file).

Reos generates XHTML output following the diagram :