Poor Editing, Poor Examples

This feels like a book that had it's table of contents laid out, and then the content filled in as quickly as possible. Editing must have lasted about 3 days. With a more thorough editing process, and a bit more thought to the examples (the boulevard examples taumatized me so much, I nearly stopped driving), it may have been a very good book.

In some sections, the same paragraph is repeated verbatim 2 or even 3 times. Often in the chapter overview, and then on the next page in the first chapter section.

Possibly the book appeals to other learning styles better, but I've found it a tough slog. In fairness though, XSLT is a strange and difficult beast- I may be transferring some of my frustration on to the messenger!

However, in general, I find the examples are too repetive, causing them to blur together. And you find myself flipping back as many as 6 pages at times to find the xml code the description is talking about.

And there is a lack of technical illustrations to help with more difficult topics.

I would have appreciate larger examples from different domains to specific goals. The problem with a lot of the examples is the purposelessness of the examples.

XML in a Nutshell, and Michael Kay's XLST reference have provided me much more joy.

My last word of advice- follow the examples live. XSLT and XPath need practice, and lots of it.

Other Reviews

• Best Book Ever if you want to truly learn XSLT and XPATH
• Excellent XSLT reference!
• Poor Editing, Poor Examples
• Examples are laden with errors
• Not too many good examples, but a decent reference