As we've added finding aids with different features, we've adjusted and fine-tuned our two xsl style sheets, both the primary one for the finding aid and the one used by the navigation frame. We're now concerned with some larger, architectural issues.
For now, each xml finding aid has its own directory, which contains four files.
This system won't scale gracefully, which we'd like now to solve. Currently, every main.htm and nav.xsl document needs to be customized for each finding aid. Although these are minor alterations per item (entering a collection name or number once in nav.xsl and three times in main.htm), maintenance over a large collection of finding aids would be tedious, at best.
There are several possible solutions. One would be to create a single htm file per finding aid, which would combine and perform the functions of the first three files above. A preferable approach involves developing a script that replicates those same functions while alleviating the need for multiple htm files. We could then just feed collection ID numbers to this script.
Another problem we're working to solve is delivery of html versions of xml finding aids for those users without an xml compliant browser. We're currently pointing non-IE5 viewers off to static html pages, which invites problems of version control. We hope soon to have a method of creating these documents dynamically on the server at the time of request.