Re: [dita] Namespaces and Schemas: Some Initial Findings and XSLTImplications

Posting this on behalf of Eric Sirois (since the Observer's comment form seems not to work right):

Hi Eliot,

If you download the DITA public package from developerWorks the schema directory has a java directory. It includes a small application called TransformUsingXMLSchema.  It works with Xalan. It uses TRAX APIs, so it should work with Saxon, but I haven't tested it. It does not validate the schemas but simply parses them so it can resolve class attribute. So you won't get all the XML Schema parsing errors. ;)  I downloaded Saxonica over the weekend. I haven't had the chance to fully test it yet.

Here is a quick sample I ran this morning using XALAN

D:\dita13\schema\java>java TransformUsingXMLSchema file:/D:/dita13/schema/sample-xsd-file.xml file:/D:/dita13/xsl/dita2html_shell.xsl concept.html

Here is a quick sample I ran this morning using Saxonica

D:\dita13\schema\java>java TransformUsingXMLSchema file:/D:/dita13/schema/sample-xsd-file.xml file:/D:/dita13/xsl/dita2html_shell.xsl file:/D:/dita13/schema/concept.html

Both generated.....

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

  <!DOCTYPE h1 PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<h1 class="topictitle1">Lawnmower</h1>

  <div><!--topic body-->

    <p>The lawnmower is a machine used to cut grass in the yard. Lawnmowers can be 

electric, gas-powered, or manual.</p>

  </div>

I don't think that Xalan has support for XSLT 2.0 yet, but I can talk to the Xalan-J development manager to see what timeline they might for XSLT 2.0 support.  I tried using Saxonica to transform the sample-xsd-file.xml using a namespace associated with the concept schema, but it did not generate an html output.  Maybe Saxoninca does fully implement XSLT 2.0 or the portion of the spec that I was interested in.

With namespace aware XSLT stylesheets and document you should not have any problems generating HTML output. 

If you have some problems generating the output using the java app, let me know and we can work through it to get the desired results. :)

Kind regards,

Eric