Beginning XSLT

W elcome to Beginning XSLT 2.0, a comprehensive introduction to the Extensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations 2.0. This book introduces you to transforming XML with XSLT 2.0, helping you to create tailored presentations for all the information you have accessible as XML. I wrote this book, like Beginning XSLT, based on my own experience as an XSLT user, but also based on my familiarity, from training people in XSLT, with the practical and conceptual hurdles that newcomers often face. My aim is to provide a step-by-step, how-to manual for the kind of the real-world transformation problems that you will come across. Who This Book Is For This book is primarily for newcomers to XML and XSLT. It's particularly aimed towards web developers who have some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a smattering of JavaScript; but none of these are essential, and the techniques you learn in this book can just as easily be applied to transforming between XML-based markup languages as to web pages. Seasoned users of XSLT 1.0 will learn about the new datatypes, expressions, and functions of XPath 2.0 and the new facilities in XSLT that make tasks such as text processing, grouping, and creating multiple documents much easier. Although much will look familiar, there are also some fundamental changes in the XPath data model and the XSLT processing model that may take you by surprise.