Slashdot Mirror
What XML Tools Do You Use?
Omega1045 asks: "What XML tools do you use? XML Spy? EditPad? A pen, notepad, scanner, and a good OCR program? XML is now becoming more than just hype. XML, SOAP Web Services, and Enterprise Integration (EI) are really taking off from the number and type of contract opportunities I am seeing and receiving. Until recently, I was doing most of my XML by hand. Other than the nostalgia for those early HTML days, it is really eating into my time. I have started trying XML Spy, but to buy it will be a big hit in the wallet (which I am willing to do if it is the best thing out there). What does Slashdot recommend?"
soooooo....maybe xml hasn't taken off as much as you thought....
I have worked with XMLSpy and have to say working with UltraEdit is far more pleasant.
I use xmlspy at work, and it really is the best thing I have tried.
Particularly the schema editor and the Authentic component (which is now free (as in beer)).
In litteraly no time you can throw together a complex schema and make a nice gui interface for entering data which validates against said schema.
It is definitely pricey and I can't say that I would have bought it for myself, but if you have to deal with a lot of XML then it is truly worth it.
First post?
I built an entire web-based interactive Expo map using Sodipodi (sodipodi.sourceforge.net). It was very easy to edit the native XML code (actually, SVG). I found the combination of Sodipodi and vi was as powerful and far more flexible in terms of optimizing the resultant code (e.g. search and replace ¯os) than a proprietary structured program like Illustrator.
God, I can't say enough about how cool Sodipodi has become.
Good luck finding a proper viewer for the interactive code, however. Mozilla+svg has not even been of alpha quality-- all proofing had to be in Windows, IE + Adobe's SVG Viewer.
A strong consesus is emerging around a new standard.
and xmllint.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
..when it comes to separating the men from the boys is of course VI. :wq
G4 Hackintosh
Being a Tcl guy, I use tDOM. It has the fastest XSLT engine that I know of.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
XML is now becoming more than just hype.
With most of the standards less then three years old (most are one to two years old), XML still seems to too volatile to base a long-term project on it. It would be like the early days of J2EE, where it takes only six months before the code base becomes "legacy".
Also, XML introduces a lot of complexity into a project, where it is often better just to use HTTP properties instead of complex SOAP exchanges, for example.
So, is XML really more than just a bandwagon, even today?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
- Is XML dying?
- Is slashdot dying?
- Are there no good XML tools?
- Are the trolls sleeping?
Anyway psgml mode under Emacs does a fairly good job. Add in nsgmls and xmlint and things are fairly good.stxx.sourceforge.net
It's a plugin that uses XSL and XML for the display layer in struts. IMHO, it forces the MVC (model, view, control) pattern a bit more than JSP (java server pages), since you can embed java IN JSP. Extending XSLT with heavy duty business logic is really REALLY hard.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I use perl and HTML. Why would I need anything more than HTML just to make tables and fonts and crap?
BBEdit BBEdit BBEdit!
Always friend and often savior.
Amen.
Although, the BBEdit Anthology is a bit crazy.
XML is now becoming more than just hype.
i don't think you know what hype is. xml is very much in use just about everywhere that i've worked recently, and it is showing no signs of being outdated, or lacking in any way for the projects i've seen it used in.
hype is a coordinated effort to make something appear better (you can define 'better' on your own time) than it actually is, be it through advertising, or the word on the street, or whatever. XML is great, and everyone that uses it knows it - they don't need to be told.
Xerlin is an Editor, its fairly basic and needs improvment but it usually works good.
http://www.xerlin.org
Saxon is an XSLT processor
http://saxon.sourceforge.net/
and hey they are both open source and based on java.
--meh--
jEdit is what I use. It's Free Software, and runs great on Linux. It includes syntax highlighting, XML Schema validation, XML Insert (auto-completion, prompting from schema), XPath evaluation, and XSLT transformation. This functionality is built ontop of the great Apache XML tools - so it is quite complete and interoperable.
jEdit is also great for more than just XML too! I used to be mainly an Emacs user - but I spend my days in Eclipse (for Java and C++) and jEdit (for everything else) now.
from XMLMind (free/beer). They also have a very nice FOP->RTF converter (works ten times better than JFOR). Then again, I speak from document writing poitn of view, hence YMMV...
--AP
Some Utilities that I have found useful.
Editors:
vim! ( I prefer )
Active State's Komodo (for ppl who need an IDE)
Perl:
XML::Simple for parsing simple conf files
XML:Sablotron interface to Ginger Alliance's Sablotron (xslt)
C:
libxml2 for easy creation and parsing
libxslt easy xslt in conjunction with libxml2
Command line:
sabcmd for xslt (sablotron again)
fop for xsl-fo to pdf
I've tried few editors, but VIM (with scripting for folding and automatic adding of end-tags) is best I've found for both my XML and XHTML needs.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
If you're engineering a lot of schemas, transforms, and other XML weirdnesses, XMLSpy is probably the most cost-effective tool there is, despite its high cost. But I've always found it inadequate for content editing. Which is my interest, since I'm a tech writer.
Everybody with a little Java knowledge and access to a component library has written a half-assed XML content editor. But only two editing tools seem to be worth bothering with: XMetal and FrameMaker.
XMetal is very well designed. I was able to make it grok Docbook just by pointing it a the correct DTD. Unfortunately, it's Windows only. And it now belongs to Corel, which doesn't make one optimistic about its future.
Adobe now provides the "structured" version of FrameMaker for no extra charge when you buy the regular SKU. And FrameMaker runs on Windows and most Unixes. (Not Linux, alas.) Problems: the worst UI design in the universe. And defining new XML applications is a nightmare.
For editing raw XML documents, I use XEmacs. It has a nice DTD parser which you can use to show you what elements/attributes are valid in the current context. So if I'm editing XHTML, I can C-c to insert a tag. It shows what tags are valid, and you can tab-complete. C-c + allows me to insert an attribute, and it again shows which are valid and allows for tab-completion.
/. Very handy, since it will close the last open tag. If you have a big structure, you can just C-c / your way through it without having to scroll up or (gasp) remember the tag order.
To close a tag is a simple matter of C-c
Oh, and when you use C-c to insert tags, it automatically sticks it on the next line and indents it.
It's not for everybody, but it sure works great for me.
It probably doesn't have all the features of XML Spy but it works pretty well. I use it occasionally for debugging Xpath and XSLT.
Might be worth a look.
Learn to Improvise
Someone has already mentioned jEdit as a Java editor with useful XML/XSL plugins. I'd add, especially for Mac OS X users, the oXygen XML editor, also Java-based, which provides a very comfortable editing environment with tag autocompletion and built in well-formedness checking and validation (including for XHTML documents, making it a nice Web editor as well). It supports XPath queries, has a built-in DTD generator [from well-formed XML], has a tree structure editor, and more. It's proprietary but not expensive.
My site (linked above) runs via PHP and its XSLT support. I proof with xmllint, and boy is that a useful tool! It's good for both my XML and XSL files, not to mention xhtml. One thing I'm not certain of, so I'm guessing here: I don't think it can read DTDs to validate anything more than general xml well-formedness. Still, it's better than nothing.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
xmllint to validate and such
saxon for sxlt action
python - from xml import * in an interactive session and away we go
A text editor - I prefer Kwrite.
A web browser if needed - I prefer MozFire
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Since you went to XMLSpy first, I assume you're not comfortable with the emacs keybindings. In that case, try XMLWriter before XMLSpy. It's much cheaper. If that does everything you need, great. If not, I'd really suggest trying a Windows build of emacs with PSGML, Xalan, etc. If you prefer XMLSpy to emacs, that's fine, but try out the cheaper, or OSS, tools first to spare your own wallet.
Finally, if all you're really doing is a lot of web-oriented stuff like RSS, try HTML-Kit, which has XML-oriented plugins that hook into parsers and transformation engines.
If you're on windows, and already have vc.net, it's handy. There's really no need for another tool just for xml - vc.net can validate, and it integrates IE which can handle XSLT transforms.
It can read DTDs, at least the version that comes with RH8.0 can. I've used it to so. So useful....
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
What's a good tool like xmllint you'd recommend for Windows?
If you use PHP, then you have to use my ActiveLink XML Package.
It's written entirely and purely in PHP, including a parser, a tree-like XML structure, ability to query, modify, and output XML strings or documents. It includes XML, XMLDocument, XMLBranch, XMLLeaf, Tag, RSS, Tree, Branch, Leaf, and File classes. It also comes with very useful class documentation and examples.
Future plans include support and implementation of XPath (started already), DTD, XML-RPC, and other technologies. The package is licensed LGPL so you can include it in your commercial projects without having to have the whole project under GPL.
Where do I get it you ask?
Get it from the main site at active-link.com;
Sourceforge project;
Freshmeat project;
Other places like hotscripts and phpclasses will also have them.
xmllint should work on Windows, at least the rest of libxml does. The best way to get it is probably with Cygwin, so you have a lot of other useful tools for text processing, too.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
...the 'net.
Netscape/Lycos, etc. to search for whatever functionality I need, such as a TV listing gill net that sucks data off of different sites, and sluices it into a MySQL db. I then download it with my web client, and do whatever install is needed.
If I need to mod the XML, any handy text editor will do, such as BBEdit.
Other than leeching pre-configured XML, I don't have any tools.
Hey, you asked....
Jedit (http://www.jedit.org) has the basic XML features (syntax highlighting, validation, etc.) amda few nice XML plugins, they allow you to build an interactive tree of the current XML doc and to insert tags/attrs by looking them up in the DTD.
J (http://armedbear.org) is more lightweight than Jedit and faster, has better CVS integration, and supports a few basic XML-related features: a navigable tree of the current doc, syntax highlighting and indentation. Oh, and validation too.
Remember to use folding!
xmllint works under windows, if you have a gcc compiler (cygwin?) I only do windows when I'm at work, and I only do XML on my BSD box.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
www.tibco.com/solutions/products/extensibility/def ault.jsp
They provide 3 different java-based tools for XML; an editor, XML Schema tool, and a XSLT tool.
As a package, these rock. They are stable, and support multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and several commercial unices. Together are slightly more feature-rich than XMLSpy alone. They aren't open-source tools, but they do have a 30-demo download and are somewhat cheaper than XML Spy.
I still prefer XML Spy for pure editing (I use the cheap cut-down version, not the enterprise edition), but tibco's XSLT tool blows everything else that I have seen out of the water, and their schema tool compares very favorably to XML Spy.
Downside is that the whole package is written in Java and can be slow to load, although its plenty responsive once its up and running on my Win2K P3-800.
You might also check out Stylus Studio for XSLT and XML schema stuff, although after I monkey'ed with their demo for a while, I went back to the Tibco tools, mainly because Tibco offers good support and seems to be backing their product fully. Stylus, however, was recently sold to another company and is a bit behind on the newest XML standards. Stylus also Windows-only.
You're all a bunch of asshole-sucking jizzmonkeys.
www.fuckedcompany.com!