Because XML largely represents information, it is separated from how that information is to be displayed and represented to the end user. HTML is a language that strongly connects its metadata with presentation.
Applying
Style to XML
Because XML largely
represents information, it is separated from how that information is to be
displayed and represented to the end user. HTML is a language that strongly connects
its metadata with presentation. For example, the <hr> element always displays a horizontal rule.
However, there is no such limitation for the <horizontal_rule> element in XML, which can be
displayed as a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line, a string of asterisks,
an image of the prime minister, or anything at all! Therefore, styling and
presentation-level specificity needs to be applied to XML.
In HTML, the concept of applying style sheets to
further abstract the presentation layer was introduced in the form of Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS). The intent was to provide a mechanism to allow for the
flexible display of HTML across multiple devices, browsers, and display
formats. Of course, because XML doesn’t have any presentation capability at
all, it makes sense to use a similar approach. XML borrows from this concept;
the result is the XML Stylesheet Language (XSL). In XML, no element includes a
notion of how it is to be displayed, but XSL provides a mechanism to convert
the XML element to a visual or other rendition for output. XSL can convert an
XML document into HTML, SGML, RTF, another XML format, or any other file format
possible. In this method, XML truly separates its content from presentation by
providing an abstraction as to how the information specified is to be
displayed.
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XML and Web Services : Essentials of XML : The Fundamentals of XML : Applying Style to XML |