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Does OxygenXML offer XML Filtering?

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 3:54 am
by binar01011
Fellow Forum Members,
I'm researching OxygenXML and would appreciate it a lot if anyone out there can confirm for me if version 17 is able to perform what I call Attribute filtering? In other words I have 70 XML files. Within these 70 XML files the attribute "Bicycle" appears 100 times. And the attribute "Unicycle" appears 50 times.

Does OxygenXML have the tool set that will let me suppress the Unicycle XML data by letting me select the Bicycle attribute so that the end result is a manual comprised of only Bicycle data? If it helps, what I call filtering is also known as "Applicability". Either way, what I want to know is if OxygenXML let's me suppress data by means of attributes. In addition, my stylesheets are coded as XSL-FO. Therefore, is it possible to mount XSL-FO stylesheets to OxyenXML? I need my XML files converted to XSL-FO so that I can transform them into a PDF that consolidates many XML files into a single PDF publication. In other words, does OxygenXML support the ability to convert XSL-FO output into the PDF format? I hope a lot of current OxygenXML users can address my questions and confirm to me OxygenXML is the right tool for me. Thanks in advance.

Re: Does OxygenXML offer XML Filtering?

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 11:49 am
by adrian
Hello,

Are you working with common XML document formats like DITA, DocBook, TEI or do you have something custom/proprietary?

What you call "Attribute filtering" is similar to the Profiling/Conditional Text support from Oxygen in the Author mode. However, out-of-the-box Oxygen provides this support only for specialized document types like DITA and DocBook.
There is no generic attribute filtering that would process and suppress some content, you would have to create an XSL stylesheet or XQuery that copies the documents and filters the undesired content.


For XSL-FO to PDF, in short the answer is 'yes', we will follow with a detailed response on how to configure a transformation scenario for this on the other topic you created:
Is XSL-FO to PDF possible with OxygenXML?

Regards,
Adrian

Re: Does OxygenXML offer XML Filtering?

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 8:11 am
by binar01011
Adrian,
Thank you very much for your post. To answer your question I am not working with DITA, DocBook, etc...

What I am working with is the S1000D standard. This standard supports Applicability (Filtering in other words). I can suppress data as long as I use the PTC Arbortext CSDB Publishing tool. However, this tool does not support XSL Version2 stylesheets which the Army provides. Therefore, I'm researching XML editors and I want to make sure it performs what I need to do which is listed below:
1. I need my next XML editor to support Army 3031A stylesheets.
2. I need it to support the S1000D schema.
3. I need it to give me the ability to filter S1000D XML data by using assigned attributes.
4. I need it to have a Saxon rendering engine that converts the XSL-FO output to a single PDF.

So far I have learned OxygenXML uses SAXON. And I like this about it. However, what you say about OxygenXML only having an out of the box "Attribute Filtering" solution for only DocBook and DITA has got me worried. My hope is I would somehow be able to within some OxygenXML dialog window have the ability to suppress my S1000D XML data I don't want in my PDF output. In case you don't know, S1000D is in actuality XML. However, it's XML that conforms to a Schema provided for free in the link below:

http://public.s1000d.org/Pages/Home.aspx

In addition, the Army stylesheets I need to use are downloadable for free in the link below:

https://www.logsa.army.mil/mil40051/S1000D.cfm

In closing does anyone out there know if OxygenXML v17 works nicely with the S1000D Schema available in the link I included above? If the answer is yes, my guess is I should be able to perform the Attribute filtering I need to do since this task is part of the S1000D standard. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Re: Does OxygenXML offer XML Filtering?

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:10 pm
by binar01011
Adrian,
I just learned through OxygenXML tech support that it may be possible to perform XML Attribute filtering within OxygenXML Editor by using a XSLT stylesheet. Can you or anyone in this forum reading this thread please post some example XSLT code that is designed to perform the task of XML filtering? I would be very curious to take a look at such XSLT stylesheet code and know how to mount it to OxygenXML Editor so that it works. I look forward to reading any postings.

Re: Does OxygenXML offer XML Filtering?

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:40 pm
by adrian
Hello,

Thank you for the details.
As you may have already realized, Oxygen does not have built-in support for S1000D. However, there is a basic Oxygen framework for S1000D available here: https://github.com/oxygenxml/S1000D
Note that this framework currently just provides support for editing (with the help of the schemas) and some styling in Author mode.


I've downloaded and looked at the stylesheets you mentioned, but I couldn't find a clear documentation about what each stylesheet does. I would expect one of the stylesheets to perform exactly the filtering that you need. This is because, usually, when publishing, one of the first steps in the transformation pipeline is the profiling/filtering.
In closing does anyone out there know if OxygenXML v17 works nicely with the S1000D Schema available in the link I included above? If the answer is yes, my guess is I should be able to perform the Attribute filtering I need to do since this task is part of the S1000D standard.
Supporting the schema is one thing (since XML Schema is a common standard) while the filtering is another (since Applicability is specific to S1000D). So, even though the answer is yes for the schema, the attribute filtering is not a readily available operation in Oxygen.

I just learned through OxygenXML tech support that it may be possible to perform XML Attribute filtering within OxygenXML Editor by using a XSLT stylesheet.
This is what I mentioned in my previous post...
Can you or anyone in this forum reading this thread please post some example XSLT code that is designed to perform the task of XML filtering?
Since this is S1000D that we are talking about, which is an established standard, I would expect such stylesheet to already exist. Besides, you would need a specialized stylesheet written by someone who clearly understands how the S1000D Applicability (attribute filtering) works.

I can come up with a simple attribute filtering stylesheet, but I'm not sure how useful that's going to be for this...

Regards,
Adrian