Rating: Summary: a masterpiece and source of inspiration Review: After reading about the author at the beginning of the book it quickly becomes clear that, at least as far as technical knowledge goes, Michael Kay is ideally qualified to write a book on XSLT (he has long computer science experience and is one of the worlds leading experts on the subject of XSLT). However, writing a really good book also requires a lot of work as well as good writing and teaching skills. Guess what? Michael Kay shines in these areas and delivers a brilliant technical book! His writing manages in an amazing way to be at the same time lucid, precise, simple and consise and yet exhaustive. His writing style will be an ideal for me to aspire to when I am writing documentation. I am trying hard to think of an angle at which I can criticise his writing - maybe it is a bit dry? But no, I cannot really claim that either since the text is at times both personal and relaxed!I can not make a definitive judgement about this yet, but the book seems to be very comprehensive treatise of XSLT. What impressed me is how Michael highlights the versatility and power of XSLT by demonstrating many different usage patterns. Read the book and be inspired!
Rating: Summary: XSLT must-have Review: This is currently the most up to date and comprehensive book on XSLT. Not only covers XSLT in depth but also has chapters on the main XSL processors. Excellent examples throughout and a nice, readable style of writing.
Rating: Summary: Great Online Support Review: This is a great book, as the other reviewers have noted. One thing that is particularly impressive is the fact that this book has great online support (as of June, 2001 anyway). Just go to the website ... (mentioned in the book) and follow the links to join the newsgroup. You can follow the current discussion on XSLT issues and post your own questions, related to the book or not (quote page numbers and everything, if you like). Michael Kay himself answers many of the posts. I've never seen an author so interested in following up with his readers and the issues they have with his book and the topic in general. I'm impressed!
Rating: Summary: Definitely buy this book Review: I have the first edition of this book and I have to say that this book teaches XSLT wonderfully. You can do so much with XSLT it's unbelievable. This book is a tutorial and a reference. Everything you need. No other book comes close. This book has helped me to shine at my office. XSLT is not just for web developers. I'm a hardcore Java and C++ programmer. I almost always can find a way to fit XML and XSLT into what I am trying to do. Get this book and be the XSLT guru in your office!!! Then get a big fat raise at the end of the year!!! I did!!!
Rating: Summary: Excellent Review: Excellent book. I recommend it to anyone developing XSLT documents. I keep it always in my workdesk and browse through it several times a day. Outstanding reference book.
Rating: Summary: A Must Have Reference If You Are Programming In XLST Review: As others have mentioned, this is a reference. XLST is much like awk and sed type scripting languages where { FS = ",[ \t]*|[ \t]+" } actually means something. Make no mistake, this is a "disciplined" read. But, the effort is well worth it since you learn it all. There are plenty of examples to demonstrate each command/expression. My only wish was that Kay included a section on performance. After reading the book I was up and running with XLST programming, but noted some real performance issues. Also, *definately* get a XSLT tool such as eXcelon Stylus to speed up showing you the results of your code. You will save much, much time this way. Regarding time saved, its the difference between gdb (night) and dev studio (day) when debugging c++ app's. This programming book covering a tedious scripting language, so most web designers will not find it useful. They will need tools to write this stuff for them, and a "light-weight" version of this reference.
Rating: Summary: Great Refernce If You Know XSLT Already, Not A Learning Tool Review: I agree with Maxime, marathonrunner, sendow, the reader from Iowa, John Tompkins and others that: It is great reference book for developers who already know XML well and have some understanding of XSL and XSLT. It is NOT a tutorial or teaching book that is user oriented and that provides concepts and terms systematically. Less than 10% of the book covers concepts and the rest is devoted to detailing the W3C specifications. It was the first published book on XSLT and I can now relate to the book after a substantial amount learning the core of the language from many different sources. Speaking of the W3C specs for XSLT, I have often wondered whether the XSLT language will ever become a commonly used business software language, or remain the tool of software intellecutals and researchers. Mr. Kays knows a lot about XML, XSL, and XSLT. It would have helped to present the problem first, then the language, and finally the result. But we all owe him a lot for writing so much a such a short time!
Rating: Summary: Imprescindible Review: Last year, I wanted to learn and introduce myself to the XML and XSL world, so, I bought this book... I red it and I founded this very helpfully... Michael Kay wrote this book with a very practical language, and now, I'm using this book like my primary reference when I programming XSL. Specially, I recommned the chapter with the tags reference, it's very, very helpful... If you are programming with MSXML3, so this book is (for me) the best partnership... If you want to learn XSLT, don't wait, read it now! ;)
Rating: Summary: XSLT Book - it's not worth it Review: I would not recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn XSLT. The code examples are hard to understand and the writing rambles. It would be just as easy to read the w3c spec.
Rating: Summary: Excellent Reference Text Review: The title is not kidding--this is definitely a hard-core Reference text, and is by no means a tutorial or 'learn XSLT in 24 hours' type of book. I am familiar with XSL, but am not a pro and do not use XSL frequently, so this book has been somewhat difficult for me to use, as the text and examples are often cryptic to me. I would have liked to see more than one limited example for each item, but given the tremendous amount of ground that Kay covers, I understand that would be difficult and make the book even bigger than its already massive 777 pages. Overall, a very authoritative and deep technical reference that would serve as a great tool for someone with a strong XSL background.
|