RE: [xsl] Need: XSL FO Schema/ .XSD/ Validator? "defined" or "variable" based on the FO Processor used.

["Michael Kay" <mhk@xxxxxxxxx>]

> >Ideas on how you have used existing XSL-FO validation schemas to trap
> >and handle errors or anything of that type.
> 
> Why?  In my opinion, this is wasted time.

I hope to prove you wrong, Ken. I've now developed a couple of "real"
stylesheets using the schema-aware version of Saxon - not an XSL-FO
stylesheet, admittedly - and I've been very pleasantly surprised by how much
more quickly you find your XSLT coding errors when the schema validation of
the result document is built in to the XSLT processing. That's even with
Saxon 8.0 which so far only does run-time validation against the schema, it
doesn't yet do any compile-time checking (that's next on my list). The
difference basically is that instead of producing incorrect output, which
then fails validation at the next stage in the pipeline (the FO processor in
this case), you get an error message pointing to the XSLT instruction that
produces the invalid output, which gives you a much faster cycle to correct
the error.

A shameless plug for my product, I know, but I really have found that it
makes a difference. Following this enquiry, I will now be looking out for an
opportunity to try it out on a stylesheet that produces XSL-FO output.

Michael Kay