AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
![]() |
Home |  Store List |  FAQ |  Contact Us |   | ||
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
![]() |
Title: XSLT Cookbook by Sal Mangano ISBN: 0-596-00372-2 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great reference for XSLT solutions
Comment: The XSLT Cookbook offers more than one hundred code solutions to common XSLT problems. The covered topics range from string operations, handling dates and numbers to converting xml to various formats, like text, HTML or SVG.
The author also included some speciality solutions for working with Visio and Excel documents or generating XTM Topic Maps. The last chapters of the book cover some more advanced topic, like extending XSLT and testing stylesheets.
As it is a Cookbook, the beef of this book are the code examples. All examples I tested so far are of outstanding quality and work great. For the most problems you will encounter when writing stylesheets, this book offers an example. Just look it up and you are there.
The very high quality of this book and it's code examples is impressive. The author Sal Mangano sure put a lot of work and research into this book. And the expertise of Jeni Tennison, as technical reviewer, and Simon St.Laurent, as editor, sure were an important factor in achieving this quality standard.
If you are an absolute beginner, you probably should start with a more tutorial style book, but as soon as you have some basic knowledge of XSLT, this book is a great reference for XSLT solutions.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Examples but Limited Use for Beginners
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Most Excellent!
Comment: 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.
![]() |
Title: XSLT : Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) by Michael Kay ISBN: 0764543814 Publisher: Wrox Pub. Date: 03 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
![]() |
Title: XSLT by Doug Tidwell ISBN: 0596000537 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
![]() |
Title: Learning Xslt by Michael Fitzgerald ISBN: 0596003277 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
![]() |
Title: Definitive XML Schema by Priscilla Walmsley ISBN: 0130655678 Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Pub. Date: 07 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
![]() |
Title: XSL FO by Dave Pawson ISBN: 0596003552 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments