[xslt] introduction, xvl.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl samba-tng org>]

hi there,

i'm an xml novice of about 6 months, experienced programmer,
and tend to pick the strangest of things as projects, just for
fun.

i found advogato to be fascinating, and decided to pick it
up and see how far i could run with it.  that has
resulted in http://sourceforge.net/projects/virgule, and
soon-to-be xmlvl.{com,net,org}, as a new mini-scripting
language, xvl.  the tags / language features of xvl are
currently described at http://virgule.sourceforge.net.

during my dev-travels, i met daniel veillard a few times.
i also came across an o'reilly nutshell book describing
xslt, hey i think i still have it, y'know.

i compared xvl to xslt, and found the principles of xslt
to be... more programming-based, less xml-based, also
that it requires two input files not one, and, despite
wanting to avoid developing a new scripting language,
decided to give xslt a miss, not least because there
weren't any implementations of it.

then, couple of days ago, daniel put up a diary entry on
advogato, mentioning libxslt.  given that there was actual
_code_, and knowing the quality of daniel's work (i'm
v. impressed by libxml2 - it's v. tightly integrated into
xvl) decided to look at it again.

anyway, well, here i am, hello, i'm looking for ways to
leverage libxslt, as if i can possibly avoid designing
a scripting language, i will do so with _great_ enthusiasm.

all best,

luke