Re: [xsl] Is there a tool for auto-generating XSLT scripts for converting XML docs -> HTML ?

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ben Stover wrote:
> Assume I have a "normal" XML docs. I want to display the content of this XML doc on a HTML page
> well formatted in tables, columns, rows and with headers.
>   

I'd be very interested in seeing a "normal" XML document. XML being a 
meta language, there does not exist such a thing as a normal XML 
document, let alone a document that would natively translate into neat 
tables, columns and the like (note that XML is by nature hierarchical, 
which rules out the common table layout for most XML documents).

> I could start now to write an appropriate XSLT script from scratch.
>   

That's what most people do, because the XSLT is designed for that.

> But I could imagine that there is a tool which does such a job (=XSLT script/stylesheet writing)
> for me. I want to use this generated XSLT stylesheet later as skeleton/base for possible refinements.
>   

There are tools that map XML data to layout (which may be HTML). Such 
tools are Altova XML Spy (or Map or what's it called), StyleVision, I 
believe, complex tools like StreamServe and Doc1, I also believe BizTalk 
has a way of displaying its XML logic graphically (but not sure it will 
be HTML). And so on and so on. The best tools are probably currently MS 
Word and Open Office, both have recent versions that fully read/write 
XML (but, as with any of these, that's there "own" format of XML). Both 
Word and Open Office can create HTML from their sources.

> As I first step I only want to avoid writing the dumb "main" stuff again and again.
>   

That's why people create libraries and link them together. Luckily, with 
XSLT, you do not need so much of these "dumb main stuff", as most is 
already there before you even start. For ready made templates and the 
like for repetitive jobs, consider FXSL or that other framework (sorry, 
forgot the name), and the templates available in books like XSLT Cookbook.

> Is there such a tool ?
>   

See above.

Cheers & happy New Year,

-- Abel Braaksma