RE: the future of xslt

> > Book sales for XML and XSLT are way down from 2000 levels, 
> but usage 
> > for both is vastly greater.
> 
> I think this has more to do with the fact that people are 
> looking to Google for quick "How do I..." answers to 
> programming questions rather than to Amazon and Barnes&Noble. 

Sure: this reflects the fact that the technologies are now being used by
jobbing programmers rather than by technology innovators; the two groups
have different ways of acquiring information.

It might also be that people in turn switch from using Google every time
they have a question to using bookmarked sites where they know they can get
the answer. There are simply too many imponderables in this.

Incidentally, Saxon hit its best ever ranking on Sourceforge at number 36
early in June. It's consistently in the top 200 projects (out of 180,000).
This puts it in the same league as TortoiseSVN, FileZilla, and jEdit: that
is, mass-market general-purpose developer tools. XSLT is not a niche.

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