This is what I'm up against, here at work. People think I'm crazy to be using XSLT to do XML processing (I think they are crazy not to). They don't understand the language, the syntax, the processing model; so they look for alternatives.

One sent me this: http://code.google.com/p/libslax/

The guy that sent it to me says "..it's one of the most useful utilities I've run across in some time."

Anyway, this is not a recommendation, I just thought it was interesting.

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Keep Moving Forward

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Michael Hare

Thanks for sharing the reference to SLAX. There have been at least half a dozen attempts over the years to create a non-XML syntax for XSLT, and none has acquired critical mass. I suspect there are several reasons for this: (a) while the XML syntax is very off-putting to beginners, it quickly becomes familiar and ceases to be an irritant (especially with XSLT 2.0 which is far less verbose), and (b) there are actually benefits to using an XML syntax, such as reuse of XML-based tools, and the ability to write meta-stylesheets that process stylesheets. Plus (c) with a front end preprocessor it is extremely hard to produce good diagnostics when people get things wrong; and productivity in programming is all about how quickly you can diagnose and correct your mistakes, not about how many characters you type in your program.

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Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference