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/LICENCE.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa.txt for more information.
29
30 Dependencies
31 ------------
32
33 XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
34
35 Package Release Information
36 ------- -------------------
37
38 libxml2dom 0.2
39 libxml2 2.6.16
40 libxslt 1.1.12
41
42 The example Web applications require WebStack (release 0.10 or later).
43
44 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
45 -------------------------------------
46
47 Special note: Konqueror seems to remember replaced form content (when
48 replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which include form
49 elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form fields exist on
50 the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions thus include the
51 values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to disable form
52 fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not associate such
53 fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to cause problems
54 for Mozilla.
55
56 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
57 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the application URL defined
58 within the Configurator application (and other relevant applications) matches
59 the URL at which the browser finds the application. This URL is deduced by the
60 various applications using the WebStack API, but it is possible that the
61 values returned by that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the
62 address bar of the browser.
63
64 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
65 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
66 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') involve a
67 URL similar to that which appears in the browser's address bar. In some
68 environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses often confuses the browser and
69 server; one workaround is to use real host names or addresses instead of
70 'localhost'.
71
72 Choosing an element-path.
73 Choosing where to put template:attribute, id and template:id.