New Ways to Look at XSLT

Over at Ask Metafilter, a questioner asks “When you imagine XSLT transformations happening in your mind’s eye, what does it look like?”

This is a very powerful question to ask, because ancient, procedurally oriented developers like me sometimes have trouble following the non-linear, pattern-driven processing that takes place when an XSLT template is applied to a tree of XML elements. In fact I have noticed that non-developers sometimes have an easier time with XSLT than do experienced developers, because they don’t try as hard to figure out what is happening beneath the covers.

There are many good replies to the question, including a reference to a Dave Pawson’s XSL FAQ  a recommendation to use Leo, the Literate Editor with Outlines, and a pointer to some more XSL Resources.

— Jeff;

Modified 2/10/2021 – In an effort to ensure a great experience, expired links in this post have been updated or removed from the original post.