Using Style Sheets with XML

One of the important points made at the start of this chapter was that XML elements do not specify how content is presented. Instead, an XML browser should use a style sheet to determine how content in each element should be displayed. The delivery of a second draft specification for XML style sheet language (XSL) 1.0 is expected shortly after this book is published; thus, at the time of this writing, the exact details of how to implement XML style sheets are not known. However, some documents are available through the W3C that give a flavor for what XSL might ultimately be like: the draft XSL specification and the XSL Requirements Summary.

The Draft XSL Specification

The first is the draft XSL specification submitted to the W3C in August 1997. Authors of the draft expect that XML document authors will be able to use the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) standard for specifying presentation attributes for simple XML documents. Documents requiring more complex formatting would use XSL.