Re: Style questions (2 questions)

> Question #2: I have seen answers on the list where someone
> mentions XSL and XSLT seperately (and deliberately).  I
> thought the former was just a shorter version of the latter.
> After all, isnt the main purpose of the language to do
> transformations?  Is there a difference?

Sometimes, when folks make that split, they mean XSL to refer to XSL-FO 
(the Formatting Objects standard). Other times, they mean it to refer to 
the set of both XSL-FO and XSLT. That latter case is how I generally use 
it, but plenty of folks do the former.

Per W3C (http://www.w3.org/Style/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 
------------------------------------------------------------

So, if one is being precise, XSL = XSLT + XSL-FO + XPath. Not-so-precise 
humans that most of us are, we use the term however we like and sort it 
out by context.

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)