After some further offline discussion with Clay, I have decided to expand on my reviews. I whipped off my previous email very quickly, and in hind sight I realized, although useful, the reviews were lacking some of the important information people may need. My forth coming reviews will provide as much detail as you can all stomach ;-) O/S support, JDK support, price, main features, main pitfalls etc.....
Look for my review(s) in the next couple of days.
Cheers,
Rob
-----Original Message-----
From: Clay Leeds [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 11:24 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: What XSLT and XSL-FO editor do you use?
Thank you for this (IMHO) objective and good review of the style sheet designers currently available. I think this will be a good reference for people to see. If there are no objections (and time permitting!), I may even consider posting this and other reviews on the FOP web site (after fixing a couple of minor typos) in the appropriate Resources section--giving full credit to its author(s), of course!
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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>
>
>
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