[TuringTest]

There may be need for a replacement with simpler syntax; i wonder if GraphQL might be used in that role.

Out of curiosity, what tools do you use for scraping? Is there a similar simple tool for defining queries over trees?

[tannhaeuser]

fyi: XSLT was designed by James Clark, based on concepts and experience of XSLT's Scheme-based predecessor DSSSL. So there's your alternate syntax :) In a way, DSSSL has yielded to a XML-ish surface syntax much like JavaScript, also conceived as a LISPy language, yielded to a Java-ish (awk-ish, actually) syntax.

[deckard1]

I've often compared GraphQL to SOAP-XML with WSDL. It's nearly the same thing, and just about as boilerplate-y.

XSLT is about templating/transforming one XML doc into some other format. And there are simple replacements that largely fill the same role. Mustache, Handlebars, Template Toolkit (which was also the simpler solution back when XSLT was popular).