XSL is an important piece of the XML puzzle and comprises two parts. The first--XSL Transformations (XSLT)--is responsible for transforming XML documents into other formats, including XML and HTML. The second part is XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO)--a language for applying styles to documents to prepare them for various output formats. XSL Essentials uses concrete examples to present the most important aspects of XSL. This book is best suited for accomplished Web developers looking to dive right into XSL. It uses B2B examples to give you enough sample templates to begin to develop your own. The majority of the text is devoted to XSLT--the more mature of the two pieces of XSL. You'll learn how to transform documents, sort and list content, apply conditional processing, use variables and parameters, and exploit the document() function to combine information from multiple documents into one.
XSL-FO is quite a lengthy specification, but the coverage in this book is rather brief. The author focuses on the most important pieces such as defining the page regions, applying block formatting, and using tables and lists. A wrap-up chapter provides a review of XSL. The book has a companion Web site with all of the example code and links for downloading XSLT processors; the example code also comes on an included CD-ROM. XSL Essentials is far from an exhaustive examination of XSL but serves its purpose--to lay out the essential elements of this subject. --Stephen W. Plain
Topics covered: Transformation and processors, outputting XML, outputting HTML and XHTML, XPath, sorting and numbering lists, conditional processing, variables and parameters, processing multiple documents, XPath functions and extensions, XSL-FO basics, XSL-FO tables and lists, XSL review.
