[oXygen-user] Visual editor for XML file mapping (xslt)

[Wendell Piez]

At 04:49 AM 12/3/2009, George wrote:
>Dear Ingo,
>
>Such an editor is on our todo list. However it is not scheduled for
>implementation yet and it requires a substantial implementation effort
>so it is a long term project.
>
>Best Regards,
>George
>--
>George Cristian Bina
><oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
>http://www.oxygenxml.com
>
>Ingo Freitag wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Do you plan for a future release to add a graphical editor for 
> creation of XML -> XML mappings with xslt?
> > Currently I'm using MapForce, but I would like to use Oxygen, 
> because the handling is much better (from my point of view).

This is unsolicited advice from a heavy XSLT user.

I have seen attempts at doing this, which have mainly faltered. I 
think this happens, for the most part, due to the early design of 
such a tool being over-ambitious. Between the impossibility of 
accommodating all potential needs, and the fact that auto-generated 
code is (except in the very simplest cases) atrocious and hard to 
maintain, such tools have turned out to be more trouble than they are worth.

The best approach to the goal, I think, is an incremental one. Start 
with a tool that does not presume to replace the need to hand edit 
XSLT, but rather aids the coder, especially in early stages.

I can see the utility of a tool that would (a) poll an input data set 
and autogenerate templates matching every element type, or perhaps 
even some qualified elements and/or attributes, and then perhaps (b) 
provide a GUI interface to enhance these templates with simple 
mappings into a target tag set.

But to go much further than that is going to require a great deal of 
testing and development with real coders using a wide variety of 
styles in a wide variety of application scenarios. It's somewhat 
analogous to natural language processing, I think: you just can't 
assume that real users will want (or even be able) to use the 
language in quite the way you expect.

The general idea of a GUI (visual/iconic) rendition and manipulation 
of arbitrary XSLT stylesheets is a related one and potentially 
intriguing. This kind of tool would not be trusted with designing 
templates (although it might support macros to facilitate writing 
common code patterns). Instead, it would take the approach of 
providing a gui/drag-and-drop "toybox" interface to the creation and 
maintenance of XSLT. (oXygen already supports some rudimentary 
features of this type, for example in its XSLT/XQuery input window, 
where you can drag an icon representing an element in the nominal 
source data file and oXygen makes a template for you.) My guess is 
that this kind of thing could be useful as a teaching tool and 
perhaps for simple push stylesheets, but for heavy-duty 
industrial-grade work, the pros will still work with the raw syntax. 
(As with most languages, once you reach a certain facility with XSLT, 
the syntax mostly disappears.)

A comparable idea is that of offering a simplified, concise syntax 
for XSLT. Such syntaxes have been proposed and even developed more 
than once, but have never caught on. There's a lesson in that, I think.

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:
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