The really great thing about XSLT is that at least it's not DSSSL. DSSSL is basically Scheme with embedded CSS-like constructs. It, unlike the bagpipes, smells as bad as it sounds.

The really, really great thing about XML+XSLT is that you can just blat them at the client's browser and, for sufficiently correct values of "browser", you get rendered content. Transformation too slow? Get a proper computer, pal, it ain't our servers.

All markup and associate transformation languages suck; they, by definition, have to. After all, in order to fit your abitrary data into a structure that anyone else can understand, you've got to pack in a wheen of redundancy, convention and plain old hope to make sure the message gets through.