News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Issues XSL 1.O as a W3C Recommendation

For more information on XSL 1.0, please contact Janet Daly
(janet@w3.org, +1 617 253 5884).

World Wide Web Consortium Issues Extensible Stylesheet Language 1.0 as a
W3C Recommendation

XSL 1.0 Delivers Professional Formatting to XML Documents

This news release
	In English:
	http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xsl-pressrelease.html.en
	In French:
	http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xsl-pressrelease.html.fr
	In Japanese:
	http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xsl-pressrelease.html.ja

Testimonials in support of XSL 1.0 from Adobe, Antenna House, Arbortext,
Bitstream, IBM, RenderX, and Sun:
	http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xst-testimonial

The W3C XSL 1.0 Recommendation
	http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xsl-20011015/


http://www.w3.org/ -- 16 October 2001 -- The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) has issued the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 1.0 as a W3C 
Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an
XML-based language that specifies how XML documents may be formatted. It
works in concert with XSL Transformations (XSLT), an XML language that 
performs transformations of structured documents. W3C Recommendation 
status indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web 
interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who 
favor its widespread adoption.

XSL 1.0 Brings Structured Styling to XML Documents

For document-driven industries, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) has
held great promise, but also presented some limitations. While XML has 
proven an effective format for structured data, it had yet to provide 
the advanced levels of formatting and structural transformation common 
to proprietary publishing tools.

XSLT 1.0, the XML language which performs transformations on XML data
and documents, has been a W3C Recommendation since November 1999, and 
already enjoys significant usage in both developer communities
and in commercial products. XSL 1.0 builds on XSLT 1.0, and provides
users with the ability to describe how XML data and documents are to 
be formatted. XSL 1.0 does this by defining "formatting objects," 
such as footnotes, headers, columns, and other features common to 
paged media.

Designers would use XSL 1.0 stylesheets to indicate rendering
preferences for a type of XML document, including how it is styled, 
laid out, and paginated onto a presentation medium such as a browser 
window, a pamphlet, or a book. An XSL engine would take the XML 
document and the XSL stylesheet, and would produce a rendering of the 
document. XSLT 1.0 makes it possible to significantly change the 
original structure of an XML document (automatic generation of tables 
of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc.), while XSL 1.0 makes
complex document formatting possible through the use of formatting
objects and properties.

XSL 1.0 Enriches XML Documents and Data with Professional Printing
Capabilities

As XSL 1.0 is focused on the formatting of paged media, it makes it
possible for professional printing capabilities and functions to 
perform with XML documents today. XSL 1.0 and XSLT make it possible 
for the needs of Web and print-based media formatting to be met. Now, 
one can have documents and data stored in XML, specify how to format 
and render them, and produce versions for both Web rendering and for
print media.

XSL 1.0 Complements CSS Technologies

The Cascading Style Sheet language (CSS), both levels 1 and 2 has long
been recognized as the style language of choice for HTML and XHTML 
documents. CSS may still be used for XML formatting, and in cases
where structural transformations are not needed, suit the needs of Web
designers.

The W3C CSS and XSL Working Groups have cooperated to ensure that their
results are complementary. Using CSS properties and the CSS formatting 
model, the XSL Working Group has ensured complete compatibility
and interoperability between the two families for styling.

XSL Benefits from Industry Support and User Testing

Key industry leaders and XML experts participated in the creation of
both the transformation and formatting components of XSL, including 
(in alphabetical order) Adobe, Antenna House, Arbortext, Bitstream, 
Enigma, IBM, James Clark, Microsoft, Oracle, RivCom, SoftQuad, 
Software AG, Sun Microsystems, University of Edinburgh, and Xerox. 
Implementation commitments are significant, and are included in 
the testimonials for XSL 1.0.

Further Developments Already Underway

The XSL and CSS Working Groups are already working on revisions and
refinements to their respective technologies. The XSL Working Group 
has published early drafts for XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0, while the CSS
Working Group has completed some of the modules and profiles of CSS
level 3.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly 
run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, 
the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control 
(INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by 
the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World 
Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and
sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, over
510 organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information
see http://www.w3.org/


Testimonials in support of XSL 1.0 from Adobe, Antenna House, Arbortext,
Bitstream, IBM, RenderX, and Sun:

As an active participant in the XSL Working Group since its 
formation, Adobe is very pleased to see XSL become a W3C 
Recommendation. The formatting objects and styling properties 
in XSL 1.0 provide a significant foundation for bringing higher 
quality formatting, pagination and control to the web, consistent 
with Adobe's page layout products -- Adobe FrameMaker, InDesign 
and PageMaker. In the world of network publishing in which
customers need predictable results when authoring and reusing 
content across print, web and wireless, standards such as XML, 
XSL and SVG are critical.
-- Julie McEntee, Director, Server Products, Adobe Systems Incorporated

We want to express our heartily welcome to the recommendation of 
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) version 1.0. I also have great 
regard for the efforts that W3C XSL Working Group has made taking a 
long time. Antenna House started SGML project in the beginning of 1996. 
At that time one of our goal was to write our product manuals using 
SGML and print them directly from SGML documents. We have achieved the 
goal finally by the newest product released in September 2001. That is
we created the product manual as an XML document, printed it using XSL 
Formatter and generated an XHTML online manual using the technology of 
XSLT. The XSL specification is what we have desired for a long time. We
recognize the importance of the XSL specification in the field of XML 
technology. Antenna House, our company, promises you to make the best 
efforts to provide XSL Formatter for the users all over the world that 
completely conforms to the XSL Recommendation. On behalf of all the 
members of our XML product team and the company,
-- Tokushige Kobayashi, President Antenna House, Inc. Tokyo, Japan

Arbortext welcomes the XSL 1.0 Recommendation and is proud to have
actively contributed to its development and testing. This is an
important technology that, for the first time, provides a
widely-adopted, powerful styling language for XML content. Our recently
announced Epic Editor version 4.2 provides an industry-first combination
of full support for XSL by offering both XSLT and XSL-FO publishing
engines for online and print publishing requirements.
-- Paul Grosso, Vice President Research and Co-Founder, Arbortext

Bitstream's subsidiary Pageflex has long supported open workflows and
has been ardent in our use of open industry standards for our
web-to-print products. As Pageflex continues to develop products for
dynamic publishing in cross-media environments, XSL is part of our
vision, which also includes using XML for content independence and PPML
and native PDF for output distribution to electronic and print media.
Pageflex is proud to have actively participated in the development and
writing of the XSL 1.0 Recommendation.
-- Charles Ying, CEO, Bitstream Inc.

IBM is pleased to have helped produce the W3C XSL 1.0 recommendation.
This standard provides a powerful framework for formatting XML
documents, messages, and data for Web browsers, devices, and print
media.
-- Bob Sutor, Director of e-business Standards Strategy, IBM

RenderX is very pleased to see XSL accepted as a W3C Recommendation.
This specification enables precise and versatile presentation of XML
data on any media, from display screens to audio devices to
high-resolution printers. Together with other W3C Recommendations such
as XSLT, XPath, and SVG, XSL forms a complete platform to provide
complex document styling for XML applications. RenderX works in XSL
sector since 1999; the advantages of XSL are widely proved by the
experience of our clients that have successfully deployed XSL-based
solutions in different areas - banking & financial service, typography,
website building, etc.
-- David Tolpin, CTO, RenderX Inc.

XSL gives us the standard formatting language that completes the
original vision for XML. With support for internationalized text and
layout, and significant implementations underway, XSL provides XML users
with the tools they need to render XML documents in a variety of forms,
including magazine-quality page formatting.
-- Jon Bosak, Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer and former
chairman of the W3C XML Working Group


Contact America -- 
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613 
Contact Europe -- 
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94 
Contact Asia -- 
     Saeko Takeuchi <saeko@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2001 10:26:32 UTC