XSL the forgotten languages

Article

With all these sites popping up on the web with cool features based on AJAX, JSON, XHTML, MySQL libraries, Ruby on Rails and such, it's easy to forget that there's an alternative to each in XML. It may sound like some web design alchemy in comparison to the modern physics of AJAX, but in reality it's actually a very 'new and emerging' specification from the W3C. Or rather specifications, there are quite a few of them. For example, there's XSLT, XSL-FO, XQuery, XPath and XLink just to name a few.

Of course, you probably expect me to explain these mysterious exclaves of the web world (it's not so wide, more long and tall) to you and how to program them, but just to be spiteful (and because, honestly, I don't fully understand them myself) I won't. But I will give you a link to the only site in existence so far that will, the W3C itself or rather it's 'W3school' program.

So what am I to achieve in this article other than forwarding everyone off of webmonkey you might ask? Admit it, that's what your thinking, right? You don't trust me to guide you on a simple little journey through some widely ignored, yet valuable code, do you? Well your very right not to, 'cause even I'm a at a bit of a loss on what to say right now, besides admitting my own insanity even though this paragraph about nothing seems to do it for me. But what my conscious mind doesn't know, the little voices in my head do, and they shall guide us forward, Onward Brain!

What the hell are these XML spin-offs?

Spin-off, perhaps?

Could it be that they are nothing, but bad spin-offs of the real thing? Cheap imitations of a good language, XML? They have no real value and were just created by the minds of other poor programmers almost as insane as myself?

Or are they the future?

Are they the under-appreciated future of us all? Maybe, this is were this whole Web 2.0 thing is going? Perhaps, the path to Web 3.0 is paved with XSLT and JSON rests like a freshly run-over squirrel on the side of the road? Could it be that in a couple of years our newb's newbs won't even know what an XmlHttpRequest is?

Or are they the past?

Perhaps they are neither, good nor evil? Perhaps, they are simply the forgotten? Like the ugly guy from that western. Maybe, they will simply fade into nothingness, like SGML, C# or even... BASIC?

The answer?

So who can answer these great questions? Who can tell us the meaning of XML life? Who can tell us who can tell the answer? Who can refer us to the first person who will later refer us to the second to answer these all important queries? I can. The man/woman/possible-'other'-but-I-that's-a-bit-unlikely-statistically-speaking capable of telling this is most likely the next person to edit this article.

I suppose there's only really one thing we know for sure, and that's that no one will ever write an article on XML as pointless, illogical and downright stupid as the one I've presented to you today. Enjoy!

Suggested readings

http://www.w3schools.com/xslfo/default.asp

• This page was last modified 15:52, 25 October 2008.