DSSSL

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created DSSSL, the Document Style Semantics and Specification Language. Subsets of DSSSL are supported by Jade and a few other tools, but it never achieved widespread support.

CSS

The W3C CSS Working Group created CSS as a style attachment language for HTML, and, more recently, XML.

XSL

Most recently, the XML effort has identified a standard Extensible Style Language (XSL) as a requirement. The W3C XSL Working Group is currently pursuing that effort.

示例，对于如下的DocBook片断，相应的各种样式表的定义如下：

<para>
This is an example paragraph. It should be presented in a
reasonable body font. <emphasis>Emphasized</emphasis> words
should be printed in italics. A single level of 
<emphasis>Nested <emphasis>emphasis</emphasis> should also
be supported.</emphasis>
</para>

dsssl

(element para
  (make paragraph
    (process-children)))

(element emphasis
  (make sequence
    font-posture: 'italic
    (process-children)))

(element (emphasis emphasis)
  (make sequence
    font-posture: 'upright
    (process-children)))

css

para              { display: block }
emphasis          { display: inline;
                    font-style: italic; }
emphasis emphasis { display: inline;
                    font-style: upright; }

xsl

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/XSL/Transform/1.0"
                xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/XSL/Format/1.0">

<xsl:template match="para">   
  <fo:block>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>  
  </fo:block>
</xsl:template>  

<xsl:template match="emphasis">
  <fo:sequence font-style="italic">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>  
  </fo:sequence>
</xsl:template>  

<xsl:template match="emphasis/emphasis">
  <fo:sequence font-style="upright">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>  
  </fo:sequence>
</xsl:template>  

</xsl:stylesheet>