The XSL Trasformations chapter introduces you to the real purpose of XSLT, i.e. to transform the content to something else.

About declaring

The root element that declares the document to be an XSL style sheet is <xsl:stylesheet> or <xsl:transform>.

Note: <xsl:stylesheet> and <xsl:transform> are completely synonymous and either can be used!

The correct way to declare an XSL style sheet according to the W3C XSLT Recommendation is:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

or:

<xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

Important

To get access to the XSLT elements, attributes and features we must declare the XSLT namespace at the top of the document.

The xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" points to the official W3C XSLT namespace. If you use this namespace, you must also include the attribute version="1.0".