RE: Question about Michael Kay's book

> I'd like to know whether its
> equally valuable
> for those of us who live without MS, i.e. no IIS, no IEx, no
> Windows OS, etc.

The bulk of the book tries to steer completely clear of any
platform-dependencies, except in Chapter 8 where it discusses extension
functions in Java and JavaScript. The book is about the language, not about
the environment you run it in.

There's one appendix on the MSXML environment, one on Saxon, one on Xalan,
one on Oracle, and one that tries to survey the rest of the product space.
The MSXML appendix is the longest, not just because of the likely level of
interest, but also because running XSLT in the client opens up a lot of
possibilities that aren't there with the other products.

> For example, how well does it cover Cocoon?

Rather superficially, I'm afraid. I tried to give it some coverage but found
it a remarkably complex environment that was difficult to do justice to in a
few pages. And a lot of it seemed to have little to do with XSLT. I didn't
have time or space for a thorough description so decided to content myself
with a few paragraphs that tried to explain briefly what Cocoon is and what
it isn't. I found even that was quite difficult...

Mike Kay
Software AG




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