Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to ANN: XSLT support added to AOLServer/nsxml

The general architecture of the ACS5 presentation system is that all pages are first produced in an intermediate XML representation which is transformed to HTML using XSLT. This makes the 'templating' system very powerful, thanks to the formating powers of XSLT.

The downside is that most HTML designers get a bit pale when you show them an XSL stylesheet for the first time. We are well aware of that problem and are working on a JSP based system that simplifies the writing of XSL stylesheets considerably, so that the styling feels more natural to a designer that is used to the imperative nature of most templating systems like ATS.

For more information on how ACS is going to use XML/XSLT you should check out the documentation on the ACS5 Presentation System, in particular Bill Schneider's excellent introuction on XML and XSLT in the ACS.

And, as always, you should post any feedback, comments, questions or criticism to the ACS Core Platform bboard, where most of the ACS5 development discussion takes place.