I have a friend who does custom web-sites for clients in a fast-paced
environment using non-WYSIWYG tools.  The work he does lends itself to
XML/XSL, but he's a professed non-programmer - and likes it that way.
:)  I asked him take a look at the following MS XSL pages (suggested by
James Clark) to evaluate the "learnability" of XSL:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/XSLGuide/xsl-overview.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/xslguide/xsl-template.asp

Here's my friend's response:

<quote>
I just did a quick glance of the doc, and it seems to make sense.  I'm
assuming it's a general overview though, and they are usually
deceivingly
simple.  from the sample, I would guess that I do have the capacity to
learn
and understand this.  To what depth, I don't know.  I am NOT a
programmer at
all, and can't write a JavaScript code from scratch.  So if there is a
substantial amount of programmer-type thinking/logic involved, I could
see
having a hard time doing complex things with XSL.  I also don't know any
XML.
</quote>

Something to keep in mind is I think my friend sells himself short on
his perceived inability to program.  I think his attitude comes from
fear, not lack of ability - the idea of learning to program can be
overwhelming.  True, some people don't have the logical mind necessary
to program, but a lot of people do - and when they tap into it, they
realize how interesting, fun and *powerful* programming is and really
fly with it.  Besides, you don't need to do complicated things with XSL
to gain value from it.

-s


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