18.1. Transforming vs. rendering XSL was designed to apply style to an XML document by using XSLT to transform it into a rendition, represented by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO). The XSL processor may then display the rendered document on a screen, print it, or convert it to some other rendition representation, such as PDF, PostScript, or even voice synthesis! But "style" in the world of generalized markup encompasses every kind of processing. The transformation could be very powerful and complex, as XSLT can reorder, duplicate, suppress, sort, and add elements. There are many applications besides formatting where such transformations would be useful. Consider an electronic commerce application where many companies must communicate. Each of their internal systems may use similar but different document types. To communicate they need to translate their various document types into a common one. An XSLT transformation provides a sophisticated but straightforward way to do so. To summarize: name notwithstanding, XSLT is more than just a style language. While it can fulfill its original design goal of transforming documents into XSL-FO renditions, it can do far more than that. XSLT can transform XML documents into other XML abstractions, and into other rendered representations as well - such as WordML. | 
