In the section subtitled "Associating stylesheets with XML documents using Processing Instructions", I am given the impression that I can add the <?xml-stylesheet> tag to the top of my XML document and reference my xsl stylesheet. Further, the book seems to indicate that if I use IE5 or higher (I am using IE 6), I can simply open the XML file and the browser will use the xsl transformation and display the results.

My question is: I tried this and the result in IE6 is correct (ie, the transformation changed the data), but the result is in plain text only. I cannot seem to get it to show formatted as XML. Is there a way to do this? Or am I supposed to use msxsl first, and then open the result in IE6?

Without any example of a non-working xml document and stylesheet this is very difficult to answer.

--

Joe

The book seems to imply that I can simply
1) create an XML document

2) create a XSL transformation including the line
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" encoding "UTF-8"/>

3) add this line to the top of the XML document
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="stylesheet.xsl"?>

4) open the XML document in IE and have it transformed correctly

I have done this, but my only problem is that IE renders the result as plain text, not as XML. How do you get it to appear as XML?

XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="XSLTFile1.xsl"?>
<order>
    <salesperson>John Doe</salesperson>
    <item>Production-Class Widget</item>
    <quantity>16</quantity>
    <date>
        <month>1</month>
        <day>13</day>
        <year>2000</year>
    </date>
    <customer>Sally Finkelstein</customer>
</order>

XSL file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
    <order>
        <date>
            <xsl:value-of select="order/date/year"/><xsl:value-of select="order/date/month"/><xsl:value-of select="order/date/day"/>
        </date>
    <customer>Company A</customer>
    <item> <xsl:apply-templates select="order/item"/>
    <quantity><xsl:value-of select="order/quantity"/></quantity>
    </item>
    </order>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="item">
<part-number>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test=". = 'Production-Class Widget'">E-16-25A</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test=". = 'Economy-Class Widget'">E-16-25B</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>00</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</part-number>
<description><xsl:value-of select="."/></description>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I will try your example later but I seem to remember something about IE and xsl-stylesheet instructions that suggested it only coped when output was html. Try changing the output method.

--

Joe