Re: Cool: Saxon driving a GUI, interactive XSLT

It ain't crazy, and I am definitely interested.

I'd love to see it and be involved. I'm an API technical writer, so I 
could help with the documentation. XSL has become one of my major tools, 
and I have converted my company's publication system entirely to PDF and 
HTML produced from XML through XSL. I would be especially interested if 
your system could be extended in the direction of an interactive GUI for 
developing stylesheets and previewing the results. (Yes, I know commercial 
products exist to do that, but I am cheap, and so is the company where I 
am consulting, so I rely excelusively on open-source tools.)

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services




Gunther Schadow <gunther@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
11/18/2004 01:38 PM
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 Cool: Saxon driving a GUI, interactive XSLT






This is cool:

Imagine you define a XUL style GUI using XML. You write a transform 
and run it with Saxon 8.1.1. This causes the GUI to appear on your 
screen. 

GUI events are turned into elements that are processed by normal 
XSLT templates. These templates can use an HTTP/POST extension
element to interact with a web service, and the response XML
documents may be transformed into new GUI elements or modify
existing ones. 

When the application finishes, the output of the transform is
-- for example -- a complete log of the user action. Or perhaps
the document that the user has worked on.

And this is not a dream! It is real. I did it. It's even pretty
straight-forward. I did it with both Swing and SWT. At this point
it's just a proof of concept, but it works. If there is interest,
I'll make it a sourceforge project. I call it XSLTGUI.

Is it crazy? I don't think so. It makes perfect sense. It's better
than the various XUL environments, because it is much more flexible
and yet lightweight. All you need is Saxon! Transform any XML document
into an interactive viewer application. The possibilities are endless. 
Welcome to the post-browser age!

regards,
-Gunther

-- 
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org