<snip>

Personally I think it's quite useful to have an alternative syntax for
XSLT.

Before trash this idea as being 'completely off the mark', please
consider the following:

I think many people will agree that it is useful to have a open
text-formatting language that is defined in XML. (e.g., the likes of
XHTML or OOo wordprocessing formats) This does not mean the end-users
of such application need to see, or even know anything about, XML.
They will see what is described in XML through a 'frontend'.

What is being suggested is the equivalent for XSLT - XSLT, while being
a handy tool, suffers from a overly verbose syntax. If there were to
be a more programmer-friendly frontend over this, so it is easier to
understand, write and maintain, I think it will be a good thing.

Of course, there are a few things that needs to be ensured before this
becomes useful.
1. it should be an open standard.
2. it should maintain a strong 1 to 1 mapping with the original XSLT,
so this alternative syntax can be translated to and from the original
XSLT without any difficulty.

Any comments are of course welcome.