最近几年来，地理信息系统无论是在理论上还是应用上都处在一个飞速发展的阶段。 GIS被应用于多个领域的建模和决策支持，如城市管理、区划、环境整治等等，地理信息成为信息时代重要的组成部分之一； “数字地球”概念的提出，更进一步推动了作为其技术支撑的GIS的发展。 与此同时，一些学者致力于相关的理论研究，如空间感知、空间数据误差、空间关系的形式化等等。 这恰好说明了地理信息系统作为应用技术和学科的两个方面，并且这两个方面构成了相互促进的发展过程。
W3C began to develop XSL due to the need for an XML based style sheet language.
The XSL language consists of three parts: XSLT, XPath and XSL formatting objects. To learn more about XSL, please read our XSL tutorial. As a W3C recommendation, XSL 1.0 was released on October 15, 2001 as a language for expressing stylesheets. It consists of three parts: XSLT, XPath, and XSL formatting objects. XSLT 1.0 became the W3C recommendation on November 16, 1999. XSLT is a language used to convert XML documents into other XML documents. XSLT 2.0 became a W3C recommendation on January 23, 2007. XSL formatting object is a vocabulary used to specify formatting semantics. Formatting refers to the process of transforming the result of an XSL transformation into a suitable reader or listener. Although there is no separate W3C document for XSL formatting objects, a description can be foundin the XSL 1.0 recommendation. Standard Draft / proposal Recommended time XSL 1.0 Oct 2001 XSL 1.1 Dec 2006 XSLT 1.0 Nov 1999 XSLT 2.0 Jan 2007 XSLT 2.0 Requirements Feb 2001 4.8.1. XSL tutorial ¶
4.8.2. XSL version ¶
XSL 1.0 ¶
XSLT 1.0 ¶
XSLT 2.0 ¶
XSL-FO (XSL formatted object) ¶
4.8.3. W3C XSL specification and timeline ¶