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XSL Stylesheets Are XML Documents
By default, they all begin with the XML declaration:
XSL Stylesheets Are Self-Declarative
All XSL stylesheets declare themselves to be stylesheets; all XSL tags utilize the concept
of namespaces described in
Chapter 3
, whereby every tag is preceded by the
namespace declaration, xsl:. When creating an XSL stylesheet, generally, the first line
that follows the XML declaration is the stylesheet declaration that includes the XSL
namespace declaration:
Remember, that because this is an XML document, the xsl:stylesheet tag must be closed
at the end of the document. This means that the last line of your stylesheet generally is
as follows:
We are big believers in the inductive method of learning as opposed to the deductive
method of learning. We feel it is easier to learn by looking at what someone has done and
then experimenting with it yourself. Therefore, throughout the rest of this chapter, we go
through example applications of the XSL syntax. We close the chapter with a reference
section on the important XSL tags available for you to use.