XSL

Why use XSL?
The process of transforming and formatting information into a rendered result is called styling. Advantages to separating content from style
• Contrary to when style information is hard-coded into the content, separation of style from content allows for the same data to be presented in different ways. This enables:
• reuse of fragments of data: the same content should look different in different contexts
• multiple output formats: different media (paper, online), different sizes (manuals, reports), different classes of output devices (workstations, hand-held devices)
• styles tailored to the reader's preference (e.g., accessibility): print size, color, simplified layout for audio readers
• standardized styles: corporate stylesheets can be applied to the content at any time
• freedom from style issues for content authors: technical writers needn't be concerned with layout issues because the correct style can be applied later The full XSL language logically consists of three component languages which are described in three W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Recommendations:
• XPath: XML Path Language--a language for referencing specific parts of an XML document
• XSLT: XSL Transformations--a language for describing how to transform one XML document (represented as a tree) into another.
• XSL: Extensible Stylesheet Language--XSLT plus a description of a set of Formatting Objects and Formatting Properties. An XSL processor takes a stylesheet consisting of a set of XSL commands and transforms it, using an input XML document.