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Style Sheet Overview
Style Sheet:
- A set of formatting instructions applied to a document
- Typically formats document for presentation or printing
- Different style sheets can be applied to same document
Types of style sheets:
Why use style sheets with XML?
- Format a document for the Web
- Convert XML to HTML
- Convert XML to other formats (e.g. CSV)
- Convert XML to other XML
Notes:
A Style Sheet is a set of formatting instructions applied to a document. This concept has long existed in word processing, where content and formatting are kept separate. This general technique allows you to maintain different style sheets that can be applied to the same document for different situations, such as for presentation or for printing.
Over time, various types of style sheets have been developed.
Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) was developed with SGML.
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are commonly used with Web pages.
XML Style Sheet language (XSL) is the most recent alternative, for use with XML documents.
Using style sheets with XML documents gives you several abilities. You can format a document for presentation on the Web. You can also convert the XML to HTML, to other flat file formats (such as CSV), or to a different XML document. The latter might be useful if two parties are sending data back and forth as XML documents, but they differ on the element and attribute names. A style sheet could convert a document from one party’s format to the other’s.