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[ANN] Beta implementation of ISO Schematron

• From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>
• To: "'XML Developers List'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:06:04 +1100

A beta implementation of ISO Schematron is now up at
  http://www.schematron.com/implementation.html

This is the successor to the "skeleton" XSLT meta-stylesheet 
implementation used widely for Schematron 1.5 and 1.6.  It implements 
all of ISO Schematron (http://www.schematron.com) except "abstract 
patterns", which will be folded in this month or added using a 
pre-processor.

Oliver Becker's skeleton design provides an XSLT API for the output 
templates. So it is very easy to override the default templates and make 
your own customized validator, if you are an experienced XSLT 
programmer. Existing validators built using the old skeleton API will 
probably work unchanged with the new one.

The site also contains two new (beta) validators built on the skeleton. 
Schematron SVRL generates XML output, using the Schematron Validation 
Report Language that is Annex D of ISO Schematron. Schematron Terminator 
will terminate after the first error is found. Example scripts are on 
the site to show how you can validate a document using SVRL output, then 
use a further "testing" Schematron schema to look at the validation 
results and report their significance or set error codes.

Comments and testers are very welcome.  The code is early beta (not 
recommended for republishing or commercial use:) and is being revised 
daily in response to feedback from the Schematron-love-in mail list
    http://eccnet.eccnet.com/mailman/listinfo/schematron-love-in

It is open source, with a non-viral license.

I expect it will be tested enough for serious use by the beginning of 
February, but it will stay in beta status until:

 * A small but full-coverage test suite has been created and passed
 * The suite passes running over Saxon 8, Saxon 6, Xerces and MSXML engines
 * The validator accepts the EXSLT and XSLT2 query bindings as well as 
XSLT1.
 * Issues arising from user comments and feature requests are handled. 
(I have already gone back over about five years of feature requests and 
suggestions to improve the code.)
 * Abstract patterns are implemented

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe