I've been puzzling over what exactly to do about Microsoft's dropping of MSXSL for some time, and I'm afraid I don't have a perfect answer for anyone. Such is life on the bleeding edge that is still XSL.
The bottom line is this: the draft XSL specification has changed four times since XML: Extensible Markup Language was first published, once radically, three times not quite as radically. In any case, the version of XSL described in my book and partially implemented by MSXSL is no longer recommended. Furthermore, Microsoft has pulled MSXSL from their Web site, and it is no longer available. I tried sending the file to a few people, but none of them seemed able to successfully unzip and install it on their systems.
Something in between the second and third working drafts of XSL is now supported by Internet Explorer 5.0. I'm working with this now, and you may wish to do the same. Of course, XSL is now up to its fifth working draft and it gets farther and farther away from what IE5 supports with each release. There are also a number of other tools for working with XSL including
None of these do exactly what MSXSL did, but some come close. I've had relatively good luck with XT in particular. All five vary in exactly which parts of which working drafts they support.
However, you must keep in mind that XSL is still a bleeding edge technology. Anything you do now will be invalidated in six months (if not sooner) so you need to be ready for this. None of the available tools fully support the current working draft, and even that draft is almost certain to change. XSL is slowly beginning to gel, but it will not be complete until late 1999 at the earliest (possibly later).
Obviously an update of the book is called for. A much revised and expanded version which will be published by IDG August 10 as The XML Bible. You can now read three complete chapters from The XML Bible on Cafe con Leche:
All three are completely up-to-date with the latest working drafts of their respective specifications.
I wish I could say the same about the printed book, but unfortunately the lead time inherent in dead tree publishing means that there's about a two-month lag between the last opportunity to make changes and the time the book hits store shelves; and that's more than enough time for a lot to change in the fast moving world of XML. Still out of 23 chapters and several appendixes, all but 3 are still current; and that's better than average in this market.
In many ways The XML Bible is the second edition of XML: Extensible Markup Language, though at over 1000 pages for the Bible vs. 400 for XML: Extensible Markup Language, there's more new material in the Bible than old. And almost all the old material has been completely rewritten for this book. Still, the focus of this book is very much the same: using XML to develop Web sites that are difficult to impossible to create with HTML.
The printed version of the XML Bible will be available on August 10, though some bookstores may take a little longer than others to get it in stock. Amazon pretty reliably sells out of my books within a day or two of getting their first copies in stock, so you may wish to pre-order a copy if you buy your computer books from them.
Example source code from The XML Bible is also. The examples from Chapter 5 should be particularly helpful with regard to basic XSL as implemented in Internet Explorer 5.0.