The Extensible Stylesheet Language Family (XSL)
XSL is a family of recommendations for defining XML document transformation and presentation. It consists of three parts:
- XSL Transformations (XSLT)
- a language for transforming XML
- the XML Path Language (XPath)
- an expression language used by XSLT to access or refer to parts of an XML document. (XPath is also used by the XML Linking specification)
- XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO)
- an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics
An XSLT stylesheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing how an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses a formatting vocabulary, such as (X)HTML or XSL-FO. For a more detailed explanation of how XSL works, see the What Is XSL page.
For background information on style sheets, see the Web style sheets resource page. XSL is developed by the W3C XSL Working Group (members only) whose charter is to develop the next version of XSL. XSL is part of W3C's XML Activity, whose work is described in the XML Activity Statement.
- XSL-List, main public list for discussion about XSL
- xsl-editors: comments/discussion on XSLT 1.0
- www-xsl-fo W3C list about Formatting Objects
- XSL-FO: a Yahoo Groups list on XSL-FO.
- If you find an error in a specification, see the Scope section of that document for how to report the error.
- XSLT: too many to list here. Check dmoz.org.
- XPath 2.0 Grammar Test Applet
- Xml2PDFrenders XSL-FO and SVG to PDF (commercial for .NET)
- Asentis DocFamily Java-based; aimed at the financial industry.
- xmlroff (C, open source)
- XF Rendering Server 2007 (commercial; includes native 64-bit and .NET support)
- Ibex PDF Creator (Java, .NET; free downloads)
- DOPE/compose (Win/Linux/Solaris/Other, Java)
- XSL Formatter (Win/Linux, free evaluation versions)
- Scriptura XBOS: Output Solution (Java, evaluation on request)
- XSLFast (Java, free evaluation version)
- XEP (Java, free evaluation version)
- Apache FOP (Java, open source)
- PassiveTeX (TeX, open source)
- Apoc XSL-FO, for integration with .NET [free evaluation version]
- Unicorn FOs (TeX, free Windows binaries)
- REXP early implementation based on Apache FOP
- X-smiles (Java, open source)
- Novosoft RTF2FO: RTF to FO converter (Java, Free evaluation version)
- WH2FO: WordHTML-to-FO (Java, Open Source)
- html2fo (C, Open Source)
- FOA: XSL Authoring Tool (Java, Open Source)
- JFO RTF to XSL-FO converter, XSL-FO API, reporting tool (Java, free evaluation version available)
- Adobe Document Server: document production framework (commercial, Win/Solaris)
- CSSToXSLFO free utility to convert XML + CSS into an XSLFO
- WH2FO: Word HTML to Formatting Objects converter.
- Infoprint XML Extender from IBM: document printing application (commercial, z/OS)
- XSL-FO tutorial by RenderX
- How to Develop Stylesheets for XML to XSL-FO Transformationby Antenna House
- XSLT & XPath tutorial from TopXML
- XSL School from w3schools.
- Introduction to XSL by Miloslav Nic
- Tutorial from iX magazine (German, English)
- XSL-FO 1.1 in PDF produced by AltSoft.
- XSLT and XPATH: A Guide to XML Transformations by John Robert Gardner and Zarella L. Rendon
- XSL-FO: Making XML Look Good in Print, a book by Dave Pawson.
- Chapter 15 of the XML Bible by Elliotte Rusty Harold is about Formatting Objects is available online.
- Miloslav Nic has published a complete FO reference
- An XSL FAQ.
- VBXML reference on XSLT and XPath.
- XSLT Programmer's Reference (2nd edition) by Michael Kay [Amazon link]
- XSLT and XPath On The Edge, Unlimited Edition by Jeni Tennison [Amazon link]
- XSLT Quickly by Bob DuCharme [Amazon link]
- XSLT by Doug Tidwell
- Practical Transformations Using XSLT and XPath, Practical Formatting Using XSLFO and Definitive XSLT and XPath from Crane Softwrights Ltd.
- Chapter 17 of the XML Bible is dedicated to XSLT
- What's New in XSLT 2.0 by Evan Lenz
- What's New in XPath 2.0 by Evan Lenz
- Using XSL Formatting Objects by J. David Eisenberg, from xml.com.
- XSL style sheets: push or pull? by Kevin Williams
- Expand XSL with extensions by Jared Jackson
- Tip: Outputting HTML from an XSL style sheetby Nicholas Chase
- EXSLT, a community initiative to provide extensions to XSLT
- The XSLT language code library by TopXML
- A few useful XSL tools and documents
- XSL Resources at Oasis
- jeremie.com's XSL pages
- XML-Web, XSLT site in German
- XSL Resources Plattform (in German)
News
2009-04-15: German documents available
data2type has made a range of documents available in German relating to XML, XSLT, XSL-FO and XPath.
2009-02-17: Altsoft Xml2PDF 2009 beta available
Altsoft s.r.o. has released Xml2PDF 2009 beta with complete HTML and DOC support, improved SVG and DocX support, digital signatures in PDF and XPS, and many other improvements.
2008-09-11: Antenna house 4.3 Released
This is a major release of Antenna House XSL Formatter that adds a 64-bit Windows version of Formatter and two major options, the INX Creator Option and the CGM Option.
2008-04-17: RenderX blogpaper
blogpaper, a Web-based interface for making PDF or PostScript from blogs, wiki pages, Web pages and more, uses RenderX.
2008-03-26: XSL-FO 2.0 Requirements Published
The Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Requirements Version 2.0 have been published, along with a Survey to ask potential implementors and users for feedback on the relative importance of the proposed new features.
2008-01-03: Assentis DocFamily 4.0 Released
Assentis Technologies has released version 4.0 of their DocFamily product suite, which includes an XSL-FO and XFORMS designer, a J2EE based composition server, a repository server and an interactive document editor based on HTML. The 4.0 release provides increased support for high-volume XSL-FO printing. DocFamily 4.0 now supports XHTML, PCL, PDF/A and ZPL as output formats, in addition to AFP, PostScript and PDF. For interactive document editing, DocWrite added XForms support and extended WYSIWYG XSL-FO editing functionality.
2007-10-05: Altsoft Xml2PDF 2007 1.1. released
Altsoft NV has released Xml2PDF 2007 v.1.1. with VML support in Word 2003-2007 Xml source and optional support of PDF/a, PDF/x specifications for PDF output.
2007-08-11: Antenna House XSL Formatter V4.2
Antenna House has released Antenna House XSL Formatter V4.2, with support for Unicode 5.0, PDF Acrobat Forms (AcroForms), PDF Digital Signatures, PDF/A, PostScript Output (as an option) and numerous other enhancements.
2007-08-08: aXSL 0.2 released
aXSL 0.2 was released; it now supports XSL-FO 1.1 constructs, and adds typesafe enumerations for datatypes. There is also support for isolating SVG code inside the Graphics module, and the code has been cleaned up and simplified. See the release notes.
2007-05-12: oXygen 8.2 released
oXygen 8.2 supports editing, running, debugging and profiling for XSLT 1 and 2, and now adds support for included and imported XSLT stylesheet fragments. It also adds new features for working with XML Query.
$Id: Overview.html,v 1.417 2009/04/15 14:08:18 liam Exp $.
This page was generated using XSLT. The XML source is also available for viewing on an XSLT-enabled browser.