XSL as XML transformation

[Leigh Dodds]

Hi,

I've been reading through the XSL spec and I noticed that it 
mentions that XSL could be used as an XML transformation mechanism
as the result tree need not use the formatting vocabulary.

Does this mean that its possible to use XSL to do transformation 
from one XML document type to another? If so are there any gotchas 
that I should be concerned with?

I've been casting about for a decent mechanism and was all set today 
to begin designing a custom system to do my job, albeit with much 
of the rules defined by an(other) XML document type. Then I read 
the XSL spec again and thought that perhaps I could get the transformation 
'for free' as much of the transformation stuff I need to do (element 
renaming, attribute/element conversions,etc) seems to be possible.

I'm aware that architectural forms offers some of this (actually 
I'm doing a many DTD, SGML -> single DTD XML conversion, so 
originally looked at SGML architectures) but I'm unclear as to 
how contentious or well defined this is for XML (as opposed to SGML).

I'd really appreciate any comments people care to make. I could 
provide some more details if necessary.

Ideally I want a relatively low maintenance solution. I'm prepared 
to do a custom implementation but don't want to miss the boat and find 
out I've reinvented the wheel (apologies for mixed metaphor ;).

L.

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