I've read up on XML, but how to really use it??

[Stan R.]

Hi. I'm an old programmer whose been finally reading up on xml the past
week. The concepts of xml, dtd, and xsl seem pretty straight forward to
me. I understand that xsl (as xslt for transformations ) can be used to
transform xml data from an xml document into another document, as
specified in the templates.

One of the best examples I've seen by far is transforming a given xml
doc into html.

But where I seem to be getting stuck in the mud is how to really apply
xml documents. I know they can be used as data holders and config files
for regular applications. But how do you use it more directly, to, say,
generate a webpage from an xml doc.

Also (and this is kind of what I'm really getting at) is, is it possible
to write web pages, so to speak, using xml and xslt. I noticed that such
applications like Front Page 2003 (I sometimes use it as my html editor)
let you make xml documents.

From what I can see, I can easily make an .xml, .dtd, and .xslt files in
a folder somewhere in the document root on my web server, but what I
TRULY don't understand is how do I actually "call" the xslt (since it
does the actual transformation) from the web browser? Does it need to be
"called" from an html document, or what? This is what I'm most confused
on, and thanks for any help clearing up the waters.

(Also, any good real world examples for an xml+dtd+xslt would be helpful
too.)

--
Stan

[Peter Flynn]

Stan R. wrote:

How do you use the document('main. xml') ?

eg <xsl:apply-templates select="documen t('myfile.xml')/some/place"/>

You just need templates which will handle the nodes that XSLT will
encounter at /some/place/ onwards.

///Peter