Carrot is not the first XSLT-inspired project to provide a shorter syntax than XSLT itself. Syntax shorthands have included Paul Tchistopolskii's XSLScript, Sam Wilmott's RXSLT, and another project called XSLTXT. Although none of these projects provided direct inspiration for Carrot, they all address one of the same desires that Carrot addresses: being able to program in XSLT more concisely
SLiP is a quick, alternative syntax for creating and editing XML data by hand and if you know Python, it should also be familiar. not my cup of tea but has a nice comparison of other lightweight xml notations