How should I use XSLT?

From Amit’s Thoughts

I was hoping that XSLT could help me generate my my web pages. Unfortunately XSLT doesn't seem to help with any of the things I wanted to do:

1. "Last modified" timestamp based on the timestamp of the original .xml file.
2. Automatically genenerated navigation bar that links to related documents (parent, children, etc.).
3. A list of recently added links (based on either explicit timestamps or by using version control).

It seems that for any of these features, I need to write my own XML processing code. So I'm holding off on learning XSLT. It only does simple things. Maybe I'll revisit it later after I implement the more important features for my site.