[empthought]

Nothing about "Emit X when you encounter P except if the third element of type Z (if it exists) of the grandparent of P is a Q with attribute TUESDAY having value FIZBIN emit Q's content transformed according to rule Y" has anything to do with a particular presentation of the data.

What one does is transform different input sources (using XSLT) into a common XML data format, applying stupid rules like the above. Then one applies another transform from the common data format (again using XSLT) to something like HTML, or XSL-FO, or CSV.

"Separation of presentation and query" is really orthogonal to both the use of XSLT and the inevitability of needing to apply complex rules when processing real-world data. XSLT and XPath just happen to be better at expressing those transformations than most other languages, and they certainly have the largest installed base.