The Microsoft XSL Processor

Technology Preview Release

January 7, 1998

The Microsoft XSL Processor is being made available in its current state as a technology preview and validation of the ideas contained in the Proposal for XSL. As Microsoft expects the XSL language to be refined, substantial changes may occur to this processor. Accordingly, we do not make any guarantees of support, explicit or implicit, for this technology preview.

The Microsoft XSL Processor runs on Windows® 95 and Windows NT® (x86 only) with Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. It is available in two packages:

The Microsoft XSL Command-line Utility is a command-line utility that generates an HTML output document from an XML document and an XSL stylesheet.
The Microsoft XSL ActiveX Control allows the output from the XSL processor to be displayed within a Web page.

Following the above links will give you installation and usage information, as well as sample files and demos.

Can't wait? Go directly to the demos (note that these require Windows 95 or Windows NT and Internet Explorer 4.0 ):

The Read Me contains a list of known bugs in the Technology Preview Release.

The Microsoft XSL Processor implements XSL as described in the Proposal for XSL with these changes and ommissions:

The current drafts of the XML language specify that XML is case-sensitive. For MSXSL, all tag and attribute names must be lowercase, except for HTML flow object names and attributes, which may be in uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case. MSXSL retains this case in the HTML output. CSS properties applied as attributes must be in lowercase for them to be recognized as styles and output within a STYLE attribute. Because some of the CSS properties (like "border") may conflict with HTML attributes, we recommend the convention of using uppercase or mixed case for all HTML attributes.
Section 2.2: <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instructions within the XML document are ignored.
Section 2.3: Importing of stylesheets is not implemented (<import>).
Section 3.2.1: Only ancestor patterns are supported, children patterns should not be used.
Section 3.2.4: ID and CLASS attribute categories are not implemented (<id> and <class>).
Section 3.3.3: <select> has been renamed to <select-elements> to avoid conflicts with the HTML <SELECT> element.
Section 3.3.4: Flow object macros are not implemented.
Section 4.1: Named styles are not implemented.
Section 5: Modes are not implemented.
Section 6.1: DSSSL Core Flow Objects are not implemented.
Section 6.2: HTML/CSS Core Flow Objects are not limited to those listed in this section. Any HTML element may be used.
Section 7.2: Side effects within ECMAScript are not detected or prevented.
Section 7.3: Units within ECMAScript are not implemented.
Section 7.4: The built-in functions are a subset of those provided in DSSSL. The XML object model is that of the Microsoft XML Parser.
Section 7.4: Script is not allowed in the "from" attribute of <select-elements>.

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