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RE: [xsl] Difference between XSL and XSLT

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Personally, I avoid using the term XSL because it means different things to
different people. 

* For historical reasons some people use XSL to mean XSLT; 

* Microsoft historically used XSL to mean the WD-xsl language, an early
approximation to XSLT; when both languages were in use they used the terms
"XSL" and "XSLT" to distinguish them

* Some people use XSL to mean what most of us call XSL-FO, because if you
look at the XSL-FO spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/) you find that its title
is "Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)" - although when you read on, you
see that it says

<quote>
This specification defines the features and syntax for the Extensible
Stylesheet Language (XSL), a language for expressing stylesheets. It
consists of two parts:

   1. a language for transforming XML documents, and
   2. an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics.
</quote>

which isn't actually true, because this spec doesn't define the features and
syntax of part (1) at all; and within the rest of the XSL-FO spec, the term
"XSL" is generally used to mean what the rest of the world calls XSL-FO.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Khorasani, Houman [mailto:Houman.Khorasani@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 10 February 2006 19:46
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [xsl] Difference between XSL and XSLT
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am having a presentation on Monday about XML, XSLT and XSD.  I am
> wondering what if they ask me what the difference between XSLT and XSL
> is, or why we should use the one over the other...I didn't know how to
> respond.
> 
> I know XSLT is a subset o XSL.  But still a bit confusing to 
> explain why
> to use XSLT rather than XSL or vice versa...
> 
> Any comment?
> Thanks
> Houman

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