Wysiwyg XSTL editor

[lb]

Hi

I'm looking for a wysiwyg XSTL editor, that actually is wysiwyg. So far
every product I have tried out seems to have the idea that wysiwyg is just
showing the result of an XML - XSL trans-formation.
What I'm looking for is an editor that lets me design how I want the result
to look, based on a XML file, and automatically generates the XSL needed to
obtain the result.

Does such a product exist?

 

[Tjerk Wolterink]

Hi

I'm looking for a wysiwyg XSTL editor, that actually is wysiwyg. So far
every product I have tried out seems to have the idea that wysiwyg is just
showing the result of an XML - XSL trans-formation.
What I'm looking for is an editor that lets me design how I want the result
to look, based on a XML file, and automatically generates the XSL needed to
obtain the result.

Does such a product exist?

i don't think that is possible. because that wysiwyg editor should supports views
for all xml formats. XHTML, WML, MathML etc.
And then anotherthing: The display can depend on the input document,
how would you render conditionals like this?

So WYSIWYG for xhtml... i dont think so... at least
not 100% wysiwyg

 

[Soren Kuula]

That's really easy to make:

Write a program that reads your output xml doc. Then, add
'<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl='the.usual.one'><xsl:template match="/">' at
the beginning and '</xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>' at then end.

Done.

Of course it's only one of infinitely many possible solutions, so how is
the editor going to guess which one you want? Making a
user-comprehensible way of expressing that .. I don't have a clear idea how.

Søren

 

[Peter Flynn]

Hi

I'm looking for a wysiwyg XSTL editor, that actually is wysiwyg. So far
every product I have tried out seems to have the idea that wysiwyg is just
showing the result of an XML - XSL trans-formation.
What I'm looking for is an editor that lets me design how I want the
result to look, based on a XML file, and automatically generates the XSL
needed to obtain the result.

Does such a product exist?

There have been several attempts, but they are restricted to simple mapping
between input elements and output elements (eg a DocBook <para> to a HTML
<p>). Anything beyond this is likely to fail because of the infinite
complexity of what people want to do with their information.

See the paper by Pietriga, Vion-Dury, and Quint on VXT, from the ACM
DocEng'01 Proceedings at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=502189
(if you can: membership required, I think).

///Peter

 

[the_Jackal]

I was in the same situation when I started a project where I am now.

I got the organisation to buy Stylus Studio XML Prof. Ed and it just
eats up XMLSpy.

You'll find though that you will spend alot of time in the coding
window but it is very easy to use, and in fact I have now improved my
XML skills and knowledge extensively by using it.

I cannot recommend it enough.

-DP

 

[Peter Flynn]

I was in the same situation when I started a project where I am now.

I got the organisation to buy Stylus Studio XML Prof. Ed and it just
eats up XMLSpy.

You'll find though that you will spend alot of time in the coding
window but it is very easy to use, and in fact I have now improved my
XML skills and knowledge extensively by using it.

That's very good, but it illustrates exactly the problem of creating
a so-called WYSIWYG interface to a tool which cannot entirely be
represented in that form. More like WYSIAYFWG.

///Peter

 

[the_Jackal]

there is one called Serna which I have used
(http://www.syntext.com/products/serna/) but given my project is too
far along in terms of the XML transformation development for web and
PDF (xsl:fo) I can't really change, but maybe worth a look ?