Re: Component/Tools to create XSL/XML

From: Jarle Stabell (jarle_at_remove_stuff_dlogikk_spam_kills_email.com)
Date: 08/22/04 

Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 14:20:56 +0200

Andrew Diabo wrote:
> Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I guess my limited
> knowledge of
> the XSL/XML pair led me to ask this question. I know I can export my
> data to XML, but I would like to display it in a pretty way such as
> when viewing the XML file in a web browser. I understand that XSL
> beautifies the XML file using attributes of some sort like font,
> color, etc.

In the beginning, the working group who were to develop the XSL standard
started with the idea they should create something called XSL, which
were to take an (arbitrary) XML document as input, and produce a
specific kind of XML document as output (a transformation), which
included font-info, color-info, all sorts of formatting things necessary
for display/print.
During their work they understood that the transformation part could be
useful in other settings, not only for creating formatted documents, but
for XML-transformations in general. So they split the thing in two, one
for the transformation part, called XSLT, and the rest is simply a
specific kind of XML-document, called XSL-FO (FO=Formatting Objects)
with predefined visual semantics.

It seems to me that most people who want to visually present their
XML-documents don't transform them into XSL-FO, but (X)HTML instead.
Instead of transforming into XSL-FO, one can transform into any XML
document type with a CSS-style***, which generalizes the case of
transforming into (X)HTML, as (X)HTML is nothing more than a specific
document type with a predefined CSS-style***.
However, I don't think there's much out there able to display XML via
CSS, therefore (X)HTML might be the only practical solution when it
comes to XML-CSS at the moment.

For XSL info:
http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/

Cheers,
Jarle