Lots of people have invented non-XML syntaxes for XSLT; they have all died a quiet death without achieving any signfiicant adoption.
I think there are a number of reasons:
(a) the use of XML syntax is off-putting to beginners but no problem at all to experienced users
(b) using a preprocessor makes development a lot more complicated - diagnostics are less helpful, and helpful diagnostics are much more important to developers than pretty syntax.
Michael Kay
Saxonica
> On 30 May 2022, at 08:45, Marcus Reichardt <> wrote:
>
> Begging (raising) the question why XSLT does have to be in XML syntax,
> and why nobody has bothered to invent an alternative non-XML syntax.
> AFAICS, the only rationale of XSLT being XML itself can be that XML
> literals can be used with ease.
