Additional style sheet language extends Web developer toolkit
Press Release: http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/XSL-WD
Testimonials: http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/XSL-WD-test
For immediate release
Contact America -- Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
+1.212.684.1814
Sally Khudairi <khudairi@w3.org>
+1.617.253.8036
Contact Europe -- Ned Mitchell <ned@ala.com>
+33 1 43 22 79 56
Andrew Lloyd <allo@ala.com>
+44 127 367 5100
Contact Asia -- Yumiko Matsubara <matsubara@w3.org>
+81.466.49.1170
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http://www.w3.org/ -- 18 August, 1998 -- Continuing its longstanding
commitment to richly presented, structured and accessible information on
the Web through the use of style sheets, the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) today announced the first public working draft of the Extensible
Style Language (XSL) 1.0 specification. XSL joins Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), the other W3C-developed style sheet language implemented in
current popular browsers, as part of the W3C Style Sheets Activity.
Style sheets allow information about presentation to be kept separate
from the content. This allows more flexible and efficient Website
maintenance, makes Web pages more accessible, and makes the Web faster.
W3C will be developing both the XSL and CSS style sheet languages in
parallel, as they are both useful for Web sites and they give Web
designers an expanded set of tools to do their work. CSS is used to
style HTML and XML documents on the Web. In addition to styling XML
documents, XSL is also able to generate new XML documents from XML
data. XSL and CSS will share the same underlying concepts and will use
the same terminology as much as possible.
Flexible online presentation of complex data
XML, the W3C-developed format for information exchange on the Web,
allows the creation of complex, highly structured documents and
data. XSL allows XML data to be abstracted and displayed to the reader
in many different ways, generating different virtual XML documents in
response to user queries.
Better printing for the Web
W3C recognized early on that printing on the Web was not fulfilling its
potential, and held a workshop on Web Printing to explore possible
improvements. XSL aims to allow the specification of print styling of
Web documents at least as well as a typical wordprocessor. In addition,
future support for high-end print typography is planned.
Strong support for International documents
The Web has become increasingly World Wide. XSL allows documents to be
written in any language, including historical languages. It allows the
specification of any writing direction; the uses for this range from
modern Japanese vertical text to ancient Greek and Aztec for scholarly
publication. Further internationalization support is planned for future
drafts.
For more information on XSL, see http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL
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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 (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: the development of open, industry standard
specifications; a repository of information about the World Wide Web for
developers and users; reference code implementations to embody and
promote standards; and various prototype and sample applications to
demonstrate use of new technology. To date, more than 275 organizations
are Members of the Consortium.
For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, see
http://www.w3.org/
W3C Hosts
* MIT Laboratory for Computer Science http://www.lcs.mit.edu/
* INRIA http://www.inria.fr/
* Keio University http://www.keio.ac.jp/