Web Maestro Clay
On Jun 21, 2004, at 9:33 AM, Rob Stote wrote:
Hello all:
I have tried the following editors:
1) Altova:
I found this editor the least user friendly of the bunch. It does not offer a true WYSIWYG environment. Once you get your head around how to actually works, you can develop stylesheet with it. Be prepared to work at it though. I was a little concerned with the use of the "for-each" in the stylesheet it produced. (please note: I have yet to try Altova latest release, stylevision. My comments are in reference to the stylesheet editor that came bundled with XMLSpy 2003 Enterprise Edition). I could create standards compliant XSL stylesheet and deploy them with out any issues. The stylesheet you produce does not contain any proprietary information/tags.
2)Inventive Designers Scriptura:
Nice WYSIWYG editor, written in java, so platform independent. Quite intuitive and easy to use. Currently (ver 3.0) Creates proprietary stylesheets that can only really be used in their formatting objects processor. The issue is they offer all kinds of bells and whistles within the editing which can prove to be extremely handy. The issues is you can not really use the designed stylesheet with FOP. They are about 2 versions behind on the xalan they use, consequently the name space references...especially when it comes to java get royally screwed up when you try and use the stylesheet in FOP. The motto here is you have to design...test... see what breaks, redesign...test...see what breaks, redesign...test...see what breaks... Then go in and manually change the name space declarations. Get the point.
3)Antenna House XSLTemplate Designer
Of the XSLFormatter fame, Antenna house has decided to offer it's clients a designer. One problem.... The "stylesheet" produced will only work with AH's XSLFormatter... You can not export the stylesheet to be used with other formatters. Try as I might, my conversation proved fruitless with them, I tried to point out that it might be important to developers to have the option to deploy the stylesheet on a machine running a formatter other than XSLFormatter... No dice.... So for the purposes of this forum.. They are out.
4)XSLFast
Nice WYSIWYG editor, written in java, so platform independent (sound familiar). XSLFast has fixed some of the annoyances they had in their earlier versions... They are the only editor on the market, as far as I can tell, that does not have an agenda of promoting a particular formatting engine (Scriptura, or antenna house). I liked using it. It is written in swing, so it can be a little sluggish in responding at times. I was able to develop a stylesheet and deploy it to my application using FOP with out any compatibility issues. It has some nice touches, such as offering a call out to an external stylesheet. The table tool is still a little counter intuitive, but over all a step forward for them.
5)by hand baby.....
The reality is I use oXygen 4.0, my Ken Holman books, Zvon, and a whole lot of blood and sweat. I try an approach the stylesheet development the same way I approach my java programming. Creating reusable objects ( in this case templates) Importing and reusing where I can.
My two cents:
Rob
-----Original Message----- From: Clay Leeds [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:16 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: What XSLT and XSL-FO editor do you use?
The only XSL-FO editors I'm aware of are listed on the FOP Resources page[1]. This discussion recently came up on this list, so if you check the archives, you might find something which leads to something.
Please report back what works best for you, so the FOP community can benefit from your experience.
Web Maestro Clay
[1] http://xml.apache.org/fop/resources.html#products-editors
On Jun 16, 2004, at 5:56 AM, Roger wrote:
> I'm wondering what editors you use to create your XSD, XSLT and XSL-FO
> documents. At the moment I'm using a trial version of Altova XMLSPY
> and Stylevision. XMLSpy is meant to create the xsd, and sample
> xml-data-documents. Stylevision is meant for the FO and XSLT
> templates.
>
> XMLSpy is okay as far as I can see, but Stylevision has one big
> drawback: you can't edit the code in it. It only has a wysiwyg editor,
> which works quite okay, but not always like I want it. Now I merely
> use it to create a quick-start template, and then edit in jEdit.
>
> With the proper plugins installed, jEdit works really nice. My problem
> is that I cannot get the new code back into Stylevision. At the Altova
> website they try to present this as a feature, but of course it's not.
>
> Do you know of any good wysiwyg editor for FO, and one that allows you
> to edit or import the code? I don't expect Dreamweaver quality. Other
> good tools are also welcome. XMLSpy works fine to create an XSD, but
> I've seen a lot of tools out there, so I'm wondering what your
> experiences are, what tips you have.
>
> Roger
>
>
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