Guidance requested : Simple XSL markup beginners problem

Subject: Guidance requested : Simple XSL markup beginners problem
From: "ECKHART.CURT" <ECKHART.CURT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:17:30 -0500
Title: Guidance requested : Simple XSL markup beginners problem

I've hesistated to post to this list because of my neophyte understanding of XSL, but this morning's experimentation leads me to this simple question.

Does IE5 understand XSL at all?

I decided to get my feet wet in XML by creating a simple personal journal and attempting to use XSL to format it.  CSS could do it, but that's not the point of my effort.

Suppose you have the following XML markup.

---------- XML datasource --------
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="">

<JOURNAL OWNER = "ECKHART.CURT" TITLE = "Curt's Personal Journal">

<DESCRIPTION><DATE_OF_ENTRY>03/06/2000</DATE_OF_ENTRY>

<p>In this document, I will attempt to keep a daily activity record.</p>

</DESCRIPTION>
</JOURNAL>
-----------

There's more to the grammar that this, but since I can't get to first base, I'll stop there.

I tried using the followin XSL file to transform this markup into HTML. I didn't get very far.

------------ XSL transformation --------
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<xsl:template match="journal">
<xsl:apply-templates select="@title"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="@owner"/>
</xsl:template> 
<xsl:template match="@title">
<CENTER>Value of title = <H1><xsl:value-of select='.'/></H1></CENTER>
</xsl:template> 
<xsl:template match="@owner">
<CENTER>Value of owner = <H1><xsl:value-of select='.'/></H1></CENTER>
</xsl:template> 
Wishing to see formatted values for title and owner to appear above this line.
</BODY>
</HTML>
</xsl:stylesheet> 
-------------

All of the literal text appears in the output but nothing else.  I even changed the
'match="journal"' clause to read 'match="journalERROR"' expecting it to suppress some
of the output, but it all rendered anyway.

I have the following questions:

1) As originally mentioned, does IE5 process XSL at all?
2) Do I grasp the basic concepts of XSL based on what you see above?
   (ie. is this the right tool for what I want, to render XML as formatted text?)
3) If IE5 won't do it, what will?

I have collected URLs provided by persons from this list pointing to newbie XSL sites, and I've spent quite a bit of time there reading, but my experiences of this morning are starting to make me think that I don't undersand anything at all.

Could anyone enlighten me?

Thanks,
Curt Eckhart
The Florida Legislature
Office of Legislative Information Technology Services
ECKHART.CURT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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