1 Introduction
2 ------------
3
4 XSLTools is a collection of modules and packages facilitating the development
5 of applications based on XML, XSL stylesheets and transformations, notably Web
6 applications involving complicated Web forms potentially consisting of
7 editable hierarchical structures and potentially involving "live" or "in-page"
8 dynamic updates to portions of those Web forms.
9
10 Quick Start
11 -----------
12
13 Try running the demo:
14
15 python tools/demo.py
16
17 An introductory guide to creating applications can be found in the docs
18 directory - see docs/index.html for the start page.
19
20 Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
21 ------------------------------------------
22
23 The current Web page for XSLTools at the time of release is:
24
25 http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/XSLTools.html
26
27 Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
28 docs/COPYING.txt, docs/LICENCE.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa.txt for more
29 information.
30
31 Dependencies
32 ------------
33
34 XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
35
36 Packages Release Information
37 -------- -------------------
38
39 libxml2dom 0.4.3
40 libxml2 and libxslt Some combinations may not be reliable!
41 Tested with libxml2 2.6.17 and libxslt 1.1.12
42 Tested with libxml2 2.6.27 and libxslt 1.1.20
43
44 The example Web applications require WebStack (release 1.2.3 or later).
45 The example PyQt applications have been tested with PyQt 3.15.
46
47 New in XSLTools 0.4.6 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.5)
48 ----------------------------------------------------
49
50 * Improved the Login module, enabling the VerySimpleWithLogin example for
51 various frameworks.
52 * Relicensed under the LGPL version 3 or later.
53 * Upgraded to Sarissa 0.9.7.8 (compatible with LGPL/GPL version 3).
54
55 New in XSLTools 0.4.5 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.4)
56 ----------------------------------------------------
57
58 * Fixed the result of transformations in XSLOutput: proper document nodes
59 are now produced.
60 * Added an XSLForms.Resources.Login module which provides resources to
61 support login screens and redirects.
62 * Fixed newlines in the attributes created from fields in XSLForms: CR
63 characters are no longer included since this caused the doubling up of
64 newlines in Firefox.
65
66 New in XSLTools 0.4.4 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.3)
67 ----------------------------------------------------
68
69 * Fixed translation selection for the template:i18n annotation attribute,
70 not just for the template:i18n extension function - more apologies for
71 resulting output changes!
72 * Improved the template fixing stylesheet and added some documentation for
73 the script and the related expr-prefix attribute.
74 * Introduced WebStack 1.2.2 EncodingSelector and encoding changes.
75 * Added docstring and return value for the write_month_to_document function
76 in XSLTools.XMLCalendar.
77
78 New in XSLTools 0.4.3 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.2)
79 ----------------------------------------------------
80
81 * Fixed translation selection when an unsupported locale is specified,
82 choosing the first locale as the default (rather than exposing the values
83 themselves as translations). Note that this is an unfortunate and subtle
84 change which may affect application output - apologies are hereby offered!
85
86 New in XSLTools 0.4.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.1)
87 ----------------------------------------------------
88
89 * Added a content type check in the XSLFormsResource class, permitting
90 non-form-based resources to access the raw request data, rather than have
91 the data processed unsuccessfully and consequently discarded.
92 * Added a script and a function to fix template namespaces after editing in
93 a careless editor.
94 * Changed libxml2mod and libxsltmod import details to try libxmlmods -
95 suggested by Lucian Wischik for libxml2dom.
96
97 New in XSLTools 0.4.1 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4)
98 --------------------------------------------------
99
100 * Made translations specified using the template:i18n annotation take
101 priority over template:value annotations.
102 * Added expression-based template:i18n annotations, and provided fallback
103 output for such translations based on the value of the evaluated
104 expression.
105
106 New in XSLTools 0.4 (Changes since XSLTools 0.3.1)
107 --------------------------------------------------
108
109 * Changed the preparation of templates to produce rule-based output
110 stylesheets, thus permitting recursive templates. This requires an extra
111 expr-prefix annotation to be used in certain kinds of templates.
112 * Added a recursive template example application.
113 * Changed fragment production to use original template documents instead of
114 output stylesheets.
115 * Changed the in_page_resources attribute to provide the output identifier,
116 thus changing the prepare_fragment method in Web resources so that only
117 the fragment identifier needs to be supplied.
118 * Added the XSLForms.Resources.WebResources.prepare_resources method for the
119 preparation of initialiser and output stylesheets before an application is
120 run.
121 * Changed selectors to not automatically create elements in the form data
122 document unless requested to do so. Introduced a Form.get_selector
123 method in XSLForms.Fields.
124 * Permitted the creation of hierarchies of elements in
125 XSLForms.Utils.add_elements.
126 * Introduced dynamic parameter evaluation for multiple-choice fields in
127 order to support sources of multiple-choice values which reside in the
128 form data document itself.
129 * Added the FixNamespace.xsl stylesheet to correct documents saved by HTML
130 editors which strip namespace prefixes.
131 * Fixed filesystem encoding issues in the Candidate example; fixed language
132 preference access in the Configurator and VerySimple examples.
133 * Changed the BaseHTTPRequestHandler version of the Candidate example to
134 store data in a subdirectory of the current working directory, thus
135 allowing the demonstration application to work after package installation.
136
137 New in XSLTools 0.3.1 (Changes since XSLTools 0.3)
138 --------------------------------------------------
139
140 * Fixed copyright and licensing information.
141
142 New in XSLTools 0.3 (Changes since XSLTools 0.2)
143 ------------------------------------------------
144
145 * Introduced copying of multiple-choice value element contents so that
146 option element labels can differ from the underlying values.
147 * Added internationalisation support, providing the template:i18n annotation
148 and the template:i18n extension function.
149 * Updated the documentation to cover the above new features.
150 * Fixed non-GET/POST request method handling in WebResources.
151 * Added the xslform_preparemacro.py script.
152 * Added an experimental template:range extension function.
153
154 New in XSLTools 0.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.1)
155 ------------------------------------------------
156
157 * Made a new XSLTools package and moved XSLOutput into it.
158 * Improved serialisation of transformation results so that output options
159 are observed (in some cases, at least).
160 * Fixed stylesheet and reference document paths so that libxslt should not
161 now become confused by ambiguous relative paths.
162 * Added expression parameters to XSLOutput.Processor so that in-document
163 data can be used to, for example, initialise multiple-choice field values.
164 * Added input/initialiser support so that input documents can be tidied or
165 initialised using information from the template.
166 * Added template:init for use with template:element in XSLForms to control
167 element initialisation where necessary.
168 * Added special high-level "macro" attributes (eg. template:attribute-field)
169 which should make templates easier to write and maintain.
170 * Added template:if to XSLForms, providing conditional output of annotated
171 elements.
172 * Added set_document to XSLForms.Fields.Form.
173 * Added prepare_parameters to the XSLFormsResource class in the
174 XSLForms.Resources.WebResources module.
175 * Added element-path, url-encode and choice XSLForms extension functions.
176 * Improved Unicode support in the XSLForms extension functions.
177 * Changed in-page requests to contain proper POST data.
178 * Fixed checkbox and radiobutton value detection in XSLForms.js.
179 * Updated the code to work with WebStack 1.0 changes and adopted the
180 new-style WebStack demonstration mechanism.
181 * Added XMLCalendar and XMLTable (to the XSLTools package).
182 * Added a dictionary (or word lookup) example application.
183 * Added a job candidate profile (or CV editor) example application.
184 * Added a template attribute reference and an XSLFormsResource guide to the
185 documentation.
186 * Added Debian package support (specifically Ubuntu package support).
187 * Added missing COPYING.txt file.
188 * Renamed the scripts to avoid naming issues in system-wide installations.
189 * Added a PyQt example based on the system configurator example, with the
190 form prepared in Qt Designer. This example runs in PyQt and in a Web
191 environment without any changes to the application code. In-page updates
192 are currently not implemented in the Web version, however.
193
194 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
195 -------------------------------------
196
197 Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
198 content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
199 include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
200 fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
201 thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
202 disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
203 associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
204 cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
205 exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
206
207 Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
208 an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
209 really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
210
211 Special note #3: Konqueror's XMLHttpRequest seems to append null characters to
212 the end of field values. Attempting to prune them before the request is sent
213 fails with a function like the following:
214
215 function fixValue(fieldValue) {
216 if (fieldValue.length == 0) {
217 return fieldValue;
218 } else if (fieldValue[fieldValue.length - 1] == '\0') {
219 return fieldValue.substr(0, fieldValue.length - 1);
220 } else {
221 return fieldValue;
222 }
223 }
224
225 This may be because it is the entire message that is terminated with the null
226 character, and that this happens only upon sending the message. Consequently,
227 some frameworks (notably mod_python) do not support in-page functionality when
228 used from Konqueror.
229
230 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
231 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
232 requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
233 browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
234 this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
235 WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
236 that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
237 browser.
238
239 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
240 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
241 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
242 a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
243 browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
244 often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
245 names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
246
247 Choosing an element-path:
248
249 When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
250 element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
251 attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
252 to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
253 document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
254 element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
255 element specified in the template:element attribute.
256
257 Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
258
259 When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
260 the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
261 annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
262 fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
263 attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
264 template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
265
266 Stable element ordering and element-path:
267
268 Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
269 Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
270 element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
271 otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
272 would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
273 positions in the document. For example:
274
275 <item value=""> .../item$1/value
276 <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
277 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
278 </item>
279
280 In-page update...
281
282 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
283
284 Notes on XSL
285 ------------
286
287 libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
288 that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
289 variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
290 detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
291
292 Release Procedures
293 ------------------
294
295 Update the XSLTools/__init__.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__
296 attributes.
297 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
298 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
299 Update the release notes (see above).
300 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
301 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
302 changelog (and other files).
303 Tag, export.
304 Generate the example resources.
305 Generate the API documentation.
306 Remove generated .pyc files: rm `find . -name "*.pyc"`
307 Archive, upload.
308 Upload the introductory documentation.
309 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
310
311 Generating the Example Resources
312 --------------------------------
313
314 In order to prepare the example resources, the prepare_demo.py script must be
315 run as follows:
316
317 python tools/prepare_demo.py
318
319 This will ensure that all initialiser and output stylesheets are created and
320 are thus installed by packages.
321
322 Generating the API Documentation
323 --------------------------------
324
325 In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
326 Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
327 be available on your system. Then, inside the distribution directory, run the
328 apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
329
330 ./tools/apidocs.sh
331
332 Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
333 apidocs directory within the distribution directory.
334
335 Making Packages
336 ---------------
337
338 To make Debian-based packages:
339
340 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
341 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
342 Debian tools happy:
343
344 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-xsltools/debian/
345
346 3. Run the package builder:
347
348 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
349
350 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
351 distribution's root directory.