XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The xml-stylesheet Processing Instruction

XML documents that will be served directly to web browsers can have an xml-stylesheet processing instruction in their prolog telling the browser where to find the associated stylesheet for the document, as discussed in the last chapter. If this stylesheet is an XSLT stylesheet, then the type pseudo-attribute should have the value application/xml. For example, this xml-stylesheet processing instruction says that browsers should apply the stylesheet found at the absolute URL http://www.oreilly.com/styles/people.xsl. Relative URLs can also be used.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="application/xml"
                 href="http://www.oreilly.com/styles/people.xsl"?>
<people>
  ...

Tip

Microsoft Internet Explorer uses type="text/xsl" for XSLT stylesheets. However, the text/xsl MIME media type has not been and will not be registered with the IANA. It is a figment of Microsoft’s imagination. In the future, application/xslt+xml will be registered to identify XSLT stylesheets specifically.