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?"

Comments

xmlspy

[rogue_gambit]

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?

Interactive structured drawing

[derinax]

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 &macros) 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.

vim and my brain

[GusherJizmac]

and xmllint.

Xerlin & Saxon

[hswerdfe]

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.

jEdit

[HRbnjR]

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.

Re:jEdit

[stagmeister]

The autocomplete in jEdit is great! I use it a LOT, when editing both XML documents, and also HTML.

Also, jEdit has support for DTDs, and if you have a valid DTD for your document, it will find and show you errors in your document so that you can fix it properly if you ever break the XML rules.

--Jason

XXE

[AndyElf]

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...

Some XML Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

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

VIM rules it all

[mystran]

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.

More details, please

[fm6]

XML is a big area. Are you using it for data transfer (they don't call it "the ASCII of the Internet for nothing!) or to author content? And what kind of data or content?

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.

Bunch of stuff

[kalidasa]

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.

Re:Um, it's still hype.

[frisket]

Firstly, XML is not a standard of any kind: it's a Recommendation of the W3C, which is rather different.

Secondly, it's based on SGML, which is a standard, and is very stable, so questions of volatility simply don't arise. You can quite happily base a project on XML: while it may one day be supplanted, it can easily be transformed into a new format, unlike Java :-)

What software you want to use depends on what you want to do. If you're doing "data" type XML for e-commerce, then XML Spy or InfoPath will be good. If on the other hand you're doing traditional "document" publishing, you need a proper text editor like XMetaL (Corel), EPIC (Arbortext), epcEdit (www.epcedit.com), WordPerfect XML (Corel again), or even at a pinch, the new StarOffice 6.1b or Word-11 when it arrives. And of course, Emacs.

Whether you like Emacs or not, it is unquestionably the most reliable and simplest to use. The psgml-mode and xml-mode or xxml-mode provide a hugely functional XML editor, with context-sensitive markup menus, colorized tags, and (with SP/nsgmls) full validation. The tdtd-mode provides DTD editing, and xslide-mode is a complete IDE for XSLT stylesheets. It won't cost you anything and it runs on all modern platforms.

XML is also a bandwagon: many companies are grotesquely misusing it because they haven't bothered to find out what it's really for, and many other companies are failing to use it where they ought to be, for the same reason. But that's life.