Editing XSLT (section)

==Media types==
The <code>&lt;output&gt;</code> element can optionally take the attribute <code>media-type</code>, which allows one to set the [[Internet media type|media type]] (or MIME type) for the resulting output, for example: <code><xsl:output output="xml" media-type="application/xml"/></code>. The XSLT 1.0 recommendation recommends the more general attribute types <code>text/xml</code> and <code>application/xml</code> since for a long time there was no registered media type for XSLT. During this time <code>text/xsl</code> became the de facto standard. In XSLT 1.0 it was not specified how the <code>media-type</code> values should be used.

With the release of the XSLT 2.0, the W3C recommended in 2007 the registration of the MIME media type <code>application/xslt+xml</code><ref>{{cite web|title=XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0|url=http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xslt20-20070123/#media-type-registration|publisher=W3C|access-date=19 October 2012}}</ref> and it was later registered with the [[Internet Assigned Numbers Authority]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Application Media Types|url=https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/index.html|publisher=IANA|access-date=19 October 2012}}</ref>

Pre-1.0 working drafts of XSLT used <code>text/xsl</code> in their embedding examples, and this type was implemented and continued to be promoted by Microsoft in Internet Explorer<ref>{{cite web|title=XSLT Requirements for Viewing XML in a Browser|url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms757857(v=vs.85).aspx|publisher=Microsoft|access-date=19 October 2012}}</ref> and MSXML circa 2012. It is also widely recognized in the <code>xml-stylesheet</code> processing instruction by other browsers. In practice, therefore, users wanting to control transformation in the browser using this processing instruction were obliged to use this unregistered media type.<ref>{{cite book | last=Kay | first=Michael | title=XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference | url=https://archive.org/details/xsltxpathprogram00kaym_646 | url-access=limited | year=2008 | publisher=Wiley | isbn=978-0-470-19274-0 | page=[https://archive.org/details/xsltxpathprogram00kaym_646/page/n151 100]}}</ref>