Preface
Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) and its companion, the XML Path Language (XPath), are arguably the two most widely used XML-related specifications to come out of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since XML 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.html).
XSLT 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt) and XPath 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath) appeared as W3C recommendations in November 1999, about a year and a half after XML. While XSLT and XPath have detractors, they are generally well-accepted in the XML community. One reason why is that XSLT is a relatively easy-to-learn, declarative language. As a declarative language, XSLT relies on an underlying implementation in a programming language such as Java or C++ to get its work done. This book intends to get you doing useful work with XSLT the same day you start reading it.
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is for anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly with XSLT. It is designed around over 200 XML and XSLT examples files—nearly every XSLT feature that this book explores, in fact, is demonstrated by an example that you can run through yourself with the XSLT processor of your choice (Apache’s Xalan C++ processor is used with most examples; see http://xml.apache.org). It doesn’t matter if you’re an XML neophyte or a seasoned programmer, this book is designed to help make your learning fast-paced and rewarding.
About the Examples
As a writer, I have labored for about 20 years under the assumption that we all learn ...