XSL allows better automated program manipulation (Re: Questio ning XSL)

[Buss, Jason A]

Well, other than CSS, can anything else handle the formatting aspects of
XML?

A lot of document authoring/management software companies are pushing the
"don't use SGML, it's too hard to implement.  Use XML." theory.  And this is
all well and good.  But we are not as hard-wired a society as many would
think.  Many (most, probably) companies still turn out hard copy
documentation for their users.  Many people (myself included) can look at an
online document, but will print it out to read it with any measure of
scrutiny.  If there is no formatting standard for XML, that leaves vendors
free to implement their own "styles", which could end up causing a person to
re-develop a stylesheet any time they want to try out/switch applications.  

IMHO, XSL is a great idea, conceptually, and through the process of review
and comment, will eventually turn out to be one of the most widely accepted,
and useful, standards of the whole body of WDs written to support XML (that
is, if vendors follow through).

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Rick Jelliffe [SMTP:ricko at allette.com.au]
> > 
> > 
> > XSL has a long way to go before it can compete with universal tools like
> > OmniMark or Perl: it will need a lot better handling of input and output
> > streams and data string manipulation: XSLT does not provide these and I
> > doubt if XSLStyle will either.  But OmniMark and Perl have side-effects
> > and are not declarative (event-driven != declarative), so XSL does
> > create a new kind of application

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