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debuggingxsltbrowserxml-serializationxhtml-1.0-strict

XSLT <xsl:output> support in main browsers


I want to transform an input XML document into XHTML via XSLT. In my stylesheet I'm using xsl:output with the following attributes:

<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" />

The transformation into XTHML 1.0 Strict works fine when I use the XSLT Processor in editors like XML Copy Editor or Editix. It works as expected when I use the command line xsltproc, too.

But when I link my stylesheet ("myfile.xsl") into the original XML document ("myfile.xml") like this:

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="myfile.xsl"?>

if I try to watch now "myfile.xml" in the major browsers (Chrome, IE or Mozilla), none of them is capable of transforming the XML document in the expected XHTML. With Opera, however, it works perfectly.

Is there something wrong in my XSLT (namely in the xsl:output) or is this a flaw in the XSLT implementation of the major browsers (IE, Chrome, Mozilla)?

The problem occurs only when I use the attribute method="xml" in . If I use method="html", it works in all browsers. But I need to generate XHTML, not HTML, that's why I use method="xml" along with the doctype-system & doctype-public attributes in xsl:output


Solution

  • Well you haven't really told us in what way the browsers fail. If you want to create XHTML output then make sure you use the XHTML namespace for your result elements i.e. put

    <xsl:stylesheet
      xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
      version="1.0">
    
    <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"
    doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
    doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" />
    
    
    <xsl:template match="/">
      <html>...<xsl:apply-templates/>...</html>
    </xsl:template>
    
    </xsl:stylesheet>
    

    in your code to make sure the result elements are XHTML elements (and not XML elements in no namespace that happen to have local names like 'html' but are not recognizable as XHTML).

    I am pretty sure that Firefox/Mozilla browsers that way with output method xml recognize the XHTML elements. And IE 9 and 10 as well I think, I am not sure older versions of IE with limited XHTML support will work.

    To give you an example, the XML input http://home.arcor.de/martin.honnen/xslt/test2013040601.xml is transformed to xml output via http://home.arcor.de/martin.honnen/xslt/test2013040601.xsl and works fine with IE 10 and current version of Firefox and Chrome on Windows 8.