From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)
It started with XSL and ended up with XSLT, XPath, and XSL-FO.
XSL stands for EXtensible Stylesheet Language.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) started to develop XSL because there was a need for an XML-based Stylesheet Language.
HTML uses predefined tags, and the meaning of each tag is well understood.
The <table> tag in HTML defines a table - and a browser knows how to display it.
Adding styles to HTML elements are simple. Telling a browser to display an element in a special font or color, is easy with CSS.
XML does not use predefined tags (we can use any tag-names we like), and therefore the meaning of each tag is not well understood.
A <table> tag could mean an HTML table, a piece of furniture, or something else - and a browser does not know how to display it.
XSL describes how the XML document should be displayed!
XSL consists of three parts:
The rest of this tutorial is about XSLT - the language for transforming XML documents.
To learn more about XPath and XSL-FO, visit our XPath Tutorial and our XSL-FO Tutorial.
From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)