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Book: XML by Example
Author: Benoit Marchal
An XML book I found much more approachable than the previously mentioned Professional XML.
I recall this book being the one where XSL clicked into place for me, and also where I started to learn about DTDs and XML schemas. I’ve always had a general “hey, this one was helpful” feeling whenever I saw it this book on my bookshelf — but time marches on.
My success with this book also helped teach me about the importance of people being able to run the code that you’re trying to write about. The reason XSL finally clicked into place for me was their examples used XML and XSL loaded via a web browser to work. There was no need for an IDE or additional tooling.
Also, this back of the front cover shows some care in making sure this is the right book for you (while doing a little innocent cross marketing of other books).
Also, note the “please pay attention to me” holes from the cat I was living with at the time.
XSL technically stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language — but really it’s a language and set of technologies for transforming XML files into a different format. Sometimes that was “styled” into an HTML page, other times it was just transforming a document into a different XML format.
It’s hard for me to pinpoint now, but when I was younger XSL had the air of a more elegant technology. Maybe if it had been in browsers from day one the world would be a more data rich, elegant, place.