Usage scenarios
XSL transformations can be used
- on server side (pre-processing), e.g. using LotusXSL
- on client side (on-the-fly processing), e.g. using IE5
to transform XML documents from one markup-language to another.
Examples:
- ArticleML --> XHTML
(viewable by browsers understanding XHTML)
- ArticleML --> HTML
(the backwards compatible way of using XSLT)
- ArticleML --> LaTeX
(a non-standard, but possible, use of XSLT)
- ArticleML --> XSL Formatting Objects
(a typical future use of XSLT)
- ArticleML --> ArticleML
(the source and target language can be the same)
- DSD --> HTML
(see http://www.brics.dk/DSD/dsd2html.html)
- XHTML --> XSL Formatting Objects
(likely, a typical future standard XSL stylesheet)
- ...
(ArticleML is the class of XML documents defined by
article.dsd in the section on DSD.)
XSL Formatting Objects is the "second half" of XSL. It is an
XML vocabulary for specifying formatting in a more low-level and
detailed way than possible with HTML+CSS.
XSL can be introduced gently to the Web world, since it both can
translate into HTML (which every browser understands), and
XSL F.O. (which future browers will understand).
