Writing Maintainable XSLT Conversions

The paper compares several ways to structure a transformation consisting of a sequence of steps, each building on earlier steps. Most of the steps are written in XSLT. The steps are connected in various ways, including with XSLT modes and variables, with the XPath 3 fn:transform() function, with XProc steps, with the Unix command-line make program, and with a batch shell script. The methods are compared in terms of maintainability: skills and knowledge needed; managing interdependencies; difficulty of revision; ease of reuse. Recommendations for structuring multi-step XSLT transformations are made that depend on context, on people, on data, with guidelines included to help project designers make the choice.