Rating: 
Summary: New source code available
Review: Although I sympathize with the previous reviewers complaint about source code organization, this is partly due to the fact that more variations are included in the source distribution then the book itself. To remedy this issue a new source code zip file has been posted to the O'Reilly site that contains README files cross-referencing source code to book examples. I hope this creates a more pleasurable experience for my readers.p.s. To avoid biasing the rating I gave myself the current 4 star rating although I humbly think most readers will have a 5 star experience!
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty well rounded, missing some specifics
Review: Excellent book to get the basics in many different areas of using XSLT. My focus is converting XML to HTML so naturally I was mostly intent on reading those chapters; the rest of them had academic value to me.
The problem I find with this book is that it doesn't focus on XSL tools and how to write snippets of code for them (I am using XSLmaker and didn't find anything on it). Maybe the book was not totally up to date. In any case, modern XSL development is driven by visual tools like XSLmaker that let you code Xpath filters or define XSL code for visual HTML fields - and that sort of integration was what I expected.
Still, I gleamed few useful tricks that saved me some time, so the book was worth it after all.
Rating:
Summary: learn from examples
Review: I needed something quick that had lots of examples of transorming text in one format to other text in another format. Had to tabulate on a text file with rows and columns of fixed length some data elements found in a XML file. This book showed me how. The $35 alone saved me several hours of my time. Sure, you could search the web, and maybe you would could find exactly what you need. But why hurt your eyes, when the price is low enough to have this simple and efficient tool called "book", at your desk, anytime you need to transform a xml file again.
Rating: 
Summary: Round out your XSLT knowledge with this gem
Review: I own both the XSLT Programmers Reference by M. Kay and XSLT by D. Tidwell. Both these books helped me learn XSLT; however, I am quite sure Mangano's book will help me master it. To be fair, I have only read the SVG chapter in detail but it provided such a treasure trove of immediately useful solutions that it alone was worth the price of the book. Sal Mangano writes in a no nonsense style that gets to the heart of what an XSLT user needs to know to get immediate results. However, far from just providing a grab bag of reusable code snippets, the XSLT Cookbook provides welcome insight in how to structure XSLT transformations. My only complaint is that the code for the book was not yet available at the O'Reilly web site. However, as the book was just recently published I am hopeful it will be posted soon.
Rating:
Summary: Most Excellent!
Review: I really wish all my computer books were this easy to read when confronted with a difficult subject matter. Chapter after chapter of good reading, which aids in the development of a skill on a subject matter that is often written by other writers in a manner that is terse and verbose. Sal got this one down pretty good. Caveat emptor, come to this book prepared with the basics.
Rating:
Summary: XSLT anyone?
Review: If ever there were a publishing company that could make XML-XSL easier to understand it's O'Reilly. Being somewhat new to the concept of XML transformations this book proved fairly intuitive, although I would recommend purchasing this book as a chaser to one that is a bit more elementary if you're just starting out. There are plenty of good working examples with detailed instruction and code. O'Reilly also provided the CD, which, as always, was a tremendous help for implementing some ideas we got from their code into our environment. The authors also provided hands-on reference for creating solutions in the XML-XSL Transformation domain. It covers areas from simple string operations to SVG generation to extending XSLT with Perl, JavaScript and Java. Overall, I do recommend this book, but as I said before this is really not the book to get if you don't know what XSLT is.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly organized source code
Review: One would think that such a code-heavy book would need decently organized source code to make it easy to follow along. Unfortunately I found this not to be the case. Trying to relate examples in the book with the downloaded source has been truly an unpleasant experience. For example, Chapter 2 shows an xml called numbers.xml which serves as input to most of the examples in the Chapter. Although there's a numbers.xml file it the directory source, it only contains about 10 lines, while the book example contains about 27 lines. But if you look in the Chapter 14 sample code directory, there is a numbers.xml file which corresponds to the sample in Chapter 2.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for all levels
Review: Probably one of the best XSLT books--at least, that I have seen. Well-suited for all user levels...top-end topics include SOAP, WSDL, and SVG. An indispensable resource for the XML developer.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for people who know XSLT
Review: Some other reviews have said that this is not a book for beginners, which is true. You need to understand the mechanics of XSLT first to get the most out of the book. That's not the real value, however. This book is great because it shows you how to write XSLT well. This is a value that a simple reference will not provide.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Examples but Limited Use for Beginners
Review: Summary: Excellent Examples but Limited Use for Beginners I'm half-way through the "XSLT Cookbook" and I must say I like this author's style. Compared to my level, Sal Mangano is a master at writing style-sheets; however, I never feel as though he is writing down to me. While most of the book is composed of cut-and-dry material, Mr. Mangano also provides just enough (but no more) interesting and slightly humorous ideas to prevent distraction. The examples are pretty useful on their own for the programmer who is just learning the language), and they also prompted some stimulating ideas for my own projects. I especially find the chapters "Extending and Embedding XSLT" and "XML to XML" helpful (although the example in section 12.6 seems incomplete with no include statements). I would have preferred a little more details on embedding Saxon in Java, but the references provided (and the sample chapter of "Java and XSLT" from O'Reilly's web site) more than enough details to get me started. Even though there are several highlights of the book, the solutions presented are a little hard to figure out (since, as a beginner, I don't yet read the Extensible Style sheet Language fluently) so a second book or tutorial is recommended for those who are generally unfamiliar with or unconfident using XSLT and XPath. The second edition should definitely have a **brief** reference or tutorial for 'us' beginners. In chapter two, he also mentions discussing trig functions, but Mr. Mangano only gives one sentence and no examples for their XSLT solutions. Although I can guess at their implementation (using a series that I constantly use in my Complex Analysis class), I wish the author would still have included such an example.
Despite these flaws, I highly recommend Sal Mangano's manuscript as an addition for anyone who is learning XSLT or just wants a quick solution to a common problem.
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