Extensible Stylesheet Language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a family of transformation languages which allows one to describe how files encoded in the XML standard are to be formatted or transformed. There are three languages in the family:
- XSL Transformations (XSLT): an XML language for transforming XML documents
- XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO): an XML language for specifying the visual formatting of an XML document
- the XML Path Language (XPath): a non-XML language used by XSLT, and also available for use in non-XSLT contexts, for addressing the parts of an XML document.
These three specifications are available in the form of W3C Recommendations.
Within Microsoft, the term XSL is sometimes used to refer to a Microsoft variant of XSLT developed as an implementation of an early (1998) W3C draft of the XSLT language, with Microsoft-specific extensions and omissions. Other commentators generally refer to this dialect as WD-xsl. The dialect was later superseded by a conformant implementation of the W3C specification.
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[edit] History
XSL started off as an attempt to bring the functionality of DSSSL, particularly in the area of print and high-end typesetting, to XML. A W3C Working group on XSL was started in December 1997, with Sharon Adler and Steve Zilles as co-chairs, with James Clark acting as editor (and unofficially as chief designer), and Chris Lilley as W3C staff contact. The group released a first public Working Draft on 18 August 1998. XSLT and XPath became W3C Recommendations on 16 November 1999 and XSL-FO reached Recommendation status on 15 October 2001.
[edit] The XSL family
[edit] XSL Transformations
There are currently many XSLT implementations available. Several web-browsers including Internet Explorer (using the MSXML engine), Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape (all using the TransforMiiX engine), and Opera (native engine), all support transformation of XML to HTML through XSLT. Other notable implementations are Saxon and Xalan.
[edit] XSL Formatting Objects
XSL Formatting Objects are less widely supported. Most, if not all, current implementations are only partial. FOP, from the Apache project, can render a large portion of the XSL formatting objects specification to PDF and other output formats. The PassiveTeX package is another implementation that uses LaTeX to convert an XSL-FO document to PDF.
Other file formats are supported to various degrees:
[edit] XPath
XML Path Language (XPath) is used by XSLT as a means of navigating an XML document and is part of the XSL family.
XQuery is another W3C project which is intended to provide similar capabilities for querying XML documents using XPath.
