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/lgpl-3.0.txt, docs/gpl-3.0.txt,
29 docs/LICENCE-Sarissa-lgpl.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa-gpl.txt for more
30 information.
31
32 Additional Software
33 -------------------
34
35 The XSLTools examples make use of sarissa.js from the Sarissa distribution,
36 release 0.9.8.1. Copies of this file are found in the Resources/scripts
37 directory within each example's package.
38
39 Dependencies
40 ------------
41
42 XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
43
44 Packages Release Information
45 -------- -------------------
46
47 libxml2dom 0.4.3 (0.4.6 recommended for XInclude support)
48 libxml2 and libxslt Some combinations may not be reliable!
49 Tested with libxml2 2.6.17 and libxslt 1.1.12
50 Tested with libxml2 2.6.27 and libxslt 1.1.20
51 libxslt 1.1.17 should be avoided
52
53 The example Web applications require WebStack (release 1.3 or later).
54 The example PyQt applications have been tested with PyQt 3.15.
55
56 New in XSLTools 0.6 (Changes since XSLTools 0.5)
57 ------------------------------------------------
58
59 * Added modular request handling methods to XSLFormsResource, altering some
60 of the examples to demonstrate the usage and overriding of these methods
61 in preference to overriding respond_to_form.
62 * Added methods to the Form class to support modular request handling.
63 * Added information about XSLT extension function usage to the advanced
64 template design document, linking to the housekeeping annotations section
65 of the template attribute reference guide.
66 * Observed changes in WebStack 1.3 and introduced default_charset usage in
67 the WebResources and PyQtWebResources modules.
68 * Added experimental OpenID support; improved the authentication resources
69 and mechanisms.
70 * NOTE: Need to add persistence for OpenID associations.
71 * Added XInclude support in templates (requires libxml2dom 0.4.6 or later).
72
73 New in XSLTools 0.5 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.6)
74 --------------------------------------------------
75
76 * Renamed template:id to template:section in order to get around problems
77 and potential future problems with browsers (such as Konqueror 3.5.6)
78 which get confused loading documents with multiple id attributes, even if
79 only one is unprefixed. WARNING! This change is not backwards compatible.
80 * Added Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) package support.
81 * Tidied the documentation HTML.
82
83 New in XSLTools 0.4.6 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.5)
84 ----------------------------------------------------
85
86 * Improved the Login module, enabling the VerySimpleWithLogin example for
87 various frameworks.
88 * Relicensed under the LGPL version 3 or later.
89 * Upgraded to Sarissa 0.9.7.8 (compatible with LGPL/GPL version 3), removing
90 a test around DOMParser so that Konqueror 3.4.0 is still supported.
91
92 New in XSLTools 0.4.5 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.4)
93 ----------------------------------------------------
94
95 * Fixed the result of transformations in XSLOutput: proper document nodes
96 are now produced.
97 * Added an XSLForms.Resources.Login module which provides resources to
98 support login screens and redirects.
99 * Fixed newlines in the attributes created from fields in XSLForms: CR
100 characters are no longer included since this caused the doubling up of
101 newlines in Firefox.
102
103 New in XSLTools 0.4.4 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.3)
104 ----------------------------------------------------
105
106 * Fixed translation selection for the template:i18n annotation attribute,
107 not just for the template:i18n extension function - more apologies for
108 resulting output changes!
109 * Improved the template fixing stylesheet and added some documentation for
110 the script and the related expr-prefix attribute.
111 * Introduced WebStack 1.2.2 EncodingSelector and encoding changes.
112 * Added docstring and return value for the write_month_to_document function
113 in XSLTools.XMLCalendar.
114
115 New in XSLTools 0.4.3 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.2)
116 ----------------------------------------------------
117
118 * Fixed translation selection when an unsupported locale is specified,
119 choosing the first locale as the default (rather than exposing the values
120 themselves as translations). Note that this is an unfortunate and subtle
121 change which may affect application output - apologies are hereby offered!
122
123 New in XSLTools 0.4.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4.1)
124 ----------------------------------------------------
125
126 * Added a content type check in the XSLFormsResource class, permitting
127 non-form-based resources to access the raw request data, rather than have
128 the data processed unsuccessfully and consequently discarded.
129 * Added a script and a function to fix template namespaces after editing in
130 a careless editor.
131 * Changed libxml2mod and libxsltmod import details to try libxmlmods -
132 suggested by Lucian Wischik for libxml2dom.
133
134 New in XSLTools 0.4.1 (Changes since XSLTools 0.4)
135 --------------------------------------------------
136
137 * Made translations specified using the template:i18n annotation take
138 priority over template:value annotations.
139 * Added expression-based template:i18n annotations, and provided fallback
140 output for such translations based on the value of the evaluated
141 expression.
142
143 New in XSLTools 0.4 (Changes since XSLTools 0.3.1)
144 --------------------------------------------------
145
146 * Changed the preparation of templates to produce rule-based output
147 stylesheets, thus permitting recursive templates. This requires an extra
148 expr-prefix annotation to be used in certain kinds of templates.
149 * Added a recursive template example application.
150 * Changed fragment production to use original template documents instead of
151 output stylesheets.
152 * Changed the in_page_resources attribute to provide the output identifier,
153 thus changing the prepare_fragment method in Web resources so that only
154 the fragment identifier needs to be supplied.
155 * Added the XSLForms.Resources.WebResources.prepare_resources method for the
156 preparation of initialiser and output stylesheets before an application is
157 run.
158 * Changed selectors to not automatically create elements in the form data
159 document unless requested to do so. Introduced a Form.get_selector
160 method in XSLForms.Fields.
161 * Permitted the creation of hierarchies of elements in
162 XSLForms.Utils.add_elements.
163 * Introduced dynamic parameter evaluation for multiple-choice fields in
164 order to support sources of multiple-choice values which reside in the
165 form data document itself.
166 * Added the FixNamespace.xsl stylesheet to correct documents saved by HTML
167 editors which strip namespace prefixes.
168 * Fixed filesystem encoding issues in the Candidate example; fixed language
169 preference access in the Configurator and VerySimple examples.
170 * Changed the BaseHTTPRequestHandler version of the Candidate example to
171 store data in a subdirectory of the current working directory, thus
172 allowing the demonstration application to work after package installation.
173
174 New in XSLTools 0.3.1 (Changes since XSLTools 0.3)
175 --------------------------------------------------
176
177 * Fixed copyright and licensing information.
178
179 New in XSLTools 0.3 (Changes since XSLTools 0.2)
180 ------------------------------------------------
181
182 * Introduced copying of multiple-choice value element contents so that
183 option element labels can differ from the underlying values.
184 * Added internationalisation support, providing the template:i18n annotation
185 and the template:i18n extension function.
186 * Updated the documentation to cover the above new features.
187 * Fixed non-GET/POST request method handling in WebResources.
188 * Added the xslform_preparemacro.py script.
189 * Added an experimental template:range extension function.
190
191 New in XSLTools 0.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.1)
192 ------------------------------------------------
193
194 * Made a new XSLTools package and moved XSLOutput into it.
195 * Improved serialisation of transformation results so that output options
196 are observed (in some cases, at least).
197 * Fixed stylesheet and reference document paths so that libxslt should not
198 now become confused by ambiguous relative paths.
199 * Added expression parameters to XSLOutput.Processor so that in-document
200 data can be used to, for example, initialise multiple-choice field values.
201 * Added input/initialiser support so that input documents can be tidied or
202 initialised using information from the template.
203 * Added template:init for use with template:element in XSLForms to control
204 element initialisation where necessary.
205 * Added special high-level "macro" attributes (eg. template:attribute-field)
206 which should make templates easier to write and maintain.
207 * Added template:if to XSLForms, providing conditional output of annotated
208 elements.
209 * Added set_document to XSLForms.Fields.Form.
210 * Added prepare_parameters to the XSLFormsResource class in the
211 XSLForms.Resources.WebResources module.
212 * Added element-path, url-encode and choice XSLForms extension functions.
213 * Improved Unicode support in the XSLForms extension functions.
214 * Changed in-page requests to contain proper POST data.
215 * Fixed checkbox and radiobutton value detection in XSLForms.js.
216 * Updated the code to work with WebStack 1.0 changes and adopted the
217 new-style WebStack demonstration mechanism.
218 * Added XMLCalendar and XMLTable (to the XSLTools package).
219 * Added a dictionary (or word lookup) example application.
220 * Added a job candidate profile (or CV editor) example application.
221 * Added a template attribute reference and an XSLFormsResource guide to the
222 documentation.
223 * Added Debian package support (specifically Ubuntu package support).
224 * Added missing COPYING.txt file.
225 * Renamed the scripts to avoid naming issues in system-wide installations.
226 * Added a PyQt example based on the system configurator example, with the
227 form prepared in Qt Designer. This example runs in PyQt and in a Web
228 environment without any changes to the application code. In-page updates
229 are currently not implemented in the Web version, however.
230
231 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
232 -------------------------------------
233
234 Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
235 content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
236 include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
237 fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
238 thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
239 disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
240 associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
241 cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
242 exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
243
244 Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
245 an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
246 really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
247
248 Special note #3: Konqueror's XMLHttpRequest seems to append null characters to
249 the end of field values. Attempting to prune them before the request is sent
250 fails with a function like the following:
251
252 function fixValue(fieldValue) {
253 if (fieldValue.length == 0) {
254 return fieldValue;
255 } else if (fieldValue[fieldValue.length - 1] == '\0') {
256 return fieldValue.substr(0, fieldValue.length - 1);
257 } else {
258 return fieldValue;
259 }
260 }
261
262 This may be because it is the entire message that is terminated with the null
263 character, and that this happens only upon sending the message. Consequently,
264 some frameworks (notably mod_python) do not support in-page functionality when
265 used from Konqueror.
266
267 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
268 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
269 requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
270 browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
271 this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
272 WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
273 that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
274 browser.
275
276 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
277 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
278 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
279 a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
280 browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
281 often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
282 names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
283
284 Choosing an element-path:
285
286 When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
287 element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
288 attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
289 to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
290 document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
291 element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
292 element specified in the template:element attribute.
293
294 Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
295
296 When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
297 the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
298 annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
299 fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
300 attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
301 template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
302
303 Stable element ordering and element-path:
304
305 Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
306 Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
307 element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
308 otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
309 would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
310 positions in the document. For example:
311
312 <item value=""> .../item$1/value
313 <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
314 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
315 </item>
316
317 In-page update...
318
319 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
320
321 Notes on XSL
322 ------------
323
324 libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
325 that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
326 variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
327 detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
328
329 Release Procedures
330 ------------------
331
332 Update the XSLTools/__init__.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__
333 attributes.
334 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
335 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
336 Update the release notes (see above).
337 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
338 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
339 changelog (and other files).
340 Tag, export.
341 Generate the example resources.
342 Generate the API documentation.
343 Remove generated .pyc files: find . -name "*.pyc" | xargs rm
344 Archive, upload.
345 Upload the introductory documentation.
346 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
347
348 Generating the Example Resources
349 --------------------------------
350
351 In order to prepare the example resources, the prepare_demo.py script must be
352 run as follows:
353
354 python tools/prepare_demo.py
355
356 This will ensure that all initialiser and output stylesheets are created and
357 are thus installed by packages.
358
359 Generating the API Documentation
360 --------------------------------
361
362 In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
363 Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
364 be available on your system. Then, inside the distribution directory, run the
365 apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
366
367 ./tools/apidocs.sh
368
369 Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
370 apidocs directory within the distribution directory.
371
372 Making Packages
373 ---------------
374
375 To make Debian-based packages:
376
377 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
378 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
379 Debian tools happy. Try one of the following:
380
381 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-xsltools/debian/
382 ln -s packages/ubuntu-feisty/python-xsltools/debian/
383
384 3. Run the package builder:
385
386 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
387
388 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
389 distribution's root directory.