There are currently two popular types of style sheet languages used in the market today, CSS and XSL. According to web professionals, CSS is considered as one of the most widely used types of styling languages in the market, while XSL is not. However, many consider XSL more powerful compared to CSS. So what are the reasons why a powerful styling language such as XSL is only second best compared to CSS?
What is XSL?
XSL or Extensible Stylesheet Language is one of the few styling languages standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. It began as an attempt to bring the functionality of DSSSL, particularly in the area of print and high-end typesetting, to XML.
However, XSL has evolved drastically from its initial design into something very different from its original purpose. Today, the term is now widely used to refer to a family of styling languages, including the XSLT (XSL Transformations) and XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects).
Though many are still unaware that XSL even exists, many web designing professionals, as well as those residing in many web design Philippines companies, had used this styling language to design a website. However, most of them have returned or transferred to using CSS rather than XSL. One of the many reasons why is because of its complexity compared to using CSS.
More Power, More Complication
According to many web design Philippines experts, the combination of XSLT and XSL-FO is what makes XSL a very powerful styling language compared to CSS. One of the reasons is because XSLT is a Turing complete language, while CSS is not
As a Turing complete language, XSLT demonstrates a degree of power and flexibility not found in CSS. Additionally, XSLT is capable of creating content, such as automatically creating a table of contents just from chapters in a book, or removing/selecting content, such as only generating a glossary from a book.
XSL-FO, on the other hand, is unlike CSS in that the XSL-FO document stands alone. CSS modifies a document that is attached to it, while the XSL-FO document (usually the result of the transformation by XSLT of the original document) contains all of the content to be presented in a purely presentational format.
However, according to many web design Philippines experts, the combination of XSLT and XSL-FO posses complication and complexity, particularly with XSL-FO.
The complexity of XSL-FO is a problem, largely because implementing an FO processor is very difficult. CSS implementations in web browsers are still not entirely compatible with one another, and it is much simpler to write a CSS processor than an FO processor.For more information visit to our site at
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