XSLT Preferences, processor choice

[Trevor-Nicholls]

I see that I can define an XSL processor to run my pre/post processing stylesheet in the structapps.fm.

The FrameMaker 12.0 developer reference offers XALAN or SAXON as options (page 26). Meanwhile the FrameMaker (2017) developer's guide says that FrameMaker supports XSL version 1.0 (page 427).

If I need XSL 2.0 functionality, and I have Saxon in my environment, will this functionality be supported?

Thanks

T

[Ian Proudfoot · Accepted solution]

Hi Trevor,

Yes you will be able to use XSLT 2.0 when Saxon is defined as the processor. It's been one of the biggest XML improvements in recent FrameMaker versions.

The attention paid to updates of the documentation is not as good as it could be. So just to cover the posibilites:

• The default XSL processor can be set in the maker.in file.
• The pre and post processor for each XML application can be defined separately in the structapps file.

Also if you have a licence of Saxon PE it should be possible to use XSLT 3.0 too. You would just need to alter the command in the maker.ini file to point to the relevant Saxon PE JAR.  However, I've not tried this yet.

Ian

[Trevor-Nicholls]

Oh wow, that's really good news.

It's not quite the same question, but I have been skimming through the developer guide and reference trying to see where the significant changes are since v8. I came across a statement that implied that document formatting could use CSS rules instead of EDD formatting rules.

In our v8 structured application I struggled to get identical layout in the editor's document view to that which appears in the final form of our delivered documentation. In part this was because of the difficulty I had formulating EDD rules (and maintaining them through changes) which were equivalent to our XSL/CSS output process. Is it going to be possible to style the document in the edit view according to CSS now, or have I simply misread the purpose of CSS in a structured application?

Edit: looks like I misinterpreted 😕

cheers

T

[Ian Proudfoot]

Regarding the CSS question. Yes it is possible to import the CSS info when you import an XML document. I've only tried it once back when I updated the Structured Developer's Guide and Reference for FM 8.0. It works up to a point, but don't expect to get the same results as you could with a hand crafted EDD. Also the possibilities of CSS have advanced significantly since the advent of HTML5, while FrameMaker's CSS import is still rudimentary.

*if you found my original XSLT processor answer useful would you mark it as correct please?