---
title: XSL
date: 2025-02-11
description: Learn about Altova tools for editing, debugging, generating, and processing XSL and XSLT.  
---

Status: #category


# XSL
XML separates content from presentation by design. XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) is a language for creating stylesheets that specify how elements in XML documents should be displayed to the end-user. The XSL standard includes XPath, XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations), and XSL:FO (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects).

XSL can be used to transform XML to another format such as HTML or to transform XML documents to conform to a new XML Schema. 

![Gears transforming data](/blog/images/gears-transform.png)

Altova supports XSLT with comprehensive editing, debugging, and profiling in XMLSpy as well as visual XSLT stylesheet design in StyleVision. And for XML to XML transformations, MapForce generates XSLT. Here are a selection of relevant articles:

- [Guide to Debugging XSLT](/blog/2026/04/xslt-debugging-finding-and-fixing-transformation-errors.md)
- [Debug XSLT with Back-mapping](/blog/2022/04/how-to-debug-xslt-and-xquery.md)
- [How to Speed Up Your XSLT - Automatically](/blog/2018/06/how-to-speed-up-your-xslt-automatically.md)
- [XSLT Stylesheet Design in StyleVision](/blog/2021/12/xml-reports-to-text.md)