Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / July 2006

XSLT is XSL Transformations: a language for transforming XML documents
into something else - usually another XML document with a different
structure, but sometimes the output is something else entirely.

XSL:FO is a derivative of XSLT designed for the purpose of formatting
XML documents for display or print. It can handle pagination quite well.
The "FO" stands for "Formatting Objects". XSL:FO can be used for
producing HTML or PDF out-of-the-box, and can produce other output
formats if a developer is willing to expend the necessary effort.

These two technologies together are referred to by W3C as "XSL", or XML
Stlylesheet Language. Both XSLT stylesheets andd XSL:FO stylesheets are
XML documents.

In both cases, the input documents have to be XML (unless you are bold
enough to step out with XSL V2.0, which is not yet quite a ratified
standard, but which can deal quite well with input documents that are
not XML). If your input documents aren't XML, then perhaps you can
convert them to XML easily; if you can't, and if XMLV2 isn't consistent
with your requirements, then the direction I'm pointing you in probably
isn't going to work for you.

It's not clear to me what "stuff" it is that you consider you are "green
at". XSLT and XSL:FO both involve quite a steep learning-curve for most
people, so perhaps the suggestions/pointers I gave were unsuitable for
you, if you are quite green in general. Googling those terms will
provide you with more information, and then you can judge for yourself
whether those technologies are ones that you can work with.