[xep-support] Re: Sneek Peek Playground

From: Kevin Brown <kevin@renderx.com>
Date: Sun Nov 30 2014 - 15:10:07 PST

Expanding on your items below:

> I tried to load a DITA XML file from the right pane and nothing happened.

Well that is basically a contenteditable <div> in an HTML browser. XML means
nothing to it, it would not know what to do with the content unless you had
associated a specific CSS to that content. This product in fact can handle
that also, allowing you to style that XML content in CSS. It is based on our
earlier work with css2pdf. This example shows that:

http://www.cloudformatter.com/CSS2Pdf.CustomTipsTricks.CustomXmlWeb

That whole table is actually just XML in the web page. CSS is used to style
that table and our engine can format it to PDF as it exists in the HTML
"view", mapping the CSS to XSL FO for you.

> When I tried to load the same file from the left pane I got this error:

Well, it would seem that the XML: could not be processed. Not sure why but
it would seem to indicate that the XML is not well formed. It is also
possible that it errors with namespaces as we have yet to build that support
into this product.

> But when I created a dead simple XML file, the left pane loaded it

Yes. And certainly much more complex XML that "dead simple" should work. See
some of the samples I sent before.

> What is the relationship between the left pane and the right pane?

Most of that answered in the other post. The "Left Pane" has multiple tabs.
It contains the XML tab which shows you your XML structure and allows you to
insert that content into the design (Right Pane). It also has the Structure
tab which shows you the structure of the current design (Right Pane).

This is very similar to our VisualXSL product. That product creates XSL in a
visual way. The big differences are that this is browser-based and allows
you to style content using CSS which some find easier that learning XSL FO.
To me it's the proper (current) marriage between HTML+CSS and XSL FO. There
are some that believe HTML+CSS will just "replace" XSL FO. We believe that
is years (many) away as there are some pagination-related concepts that are
just not important to "HTML"/browser people.

Kevin Brown
RenderX

-----Original Message-----
From: Xep-support [mailto:xep-support-bounces@renderx.com] On Behalf Of
Kevin Brown
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2014 2:52 PM
To: 'Mark Giffin'; 'RenderX Community Support List'
Subject: [xep-support] Re: Sneek Peek Playground

Mark:

It help sto understand what it does. This allows you to create HTML with
special structures inserted into that HTML. So the HTML itself serves as
your preview. And you can use (most) CSS to style that HTML to look like
what you want. At the backend, it takes that HTML with CSS and special
structures in the HTML and uses that to create XSL for XSL FO (and it uses
XSLT to do it).

So the left pane as you said is the XML pane. However, that is used to
insert variable content into the document. The variable content can be:

Field === xsl:value-of select="field"
If === xsl:if test="..." where you can use fields and values and whatever to
specify the xpath @test ... many others like repeat-containers
(xsl:for-each), choose/when/otherwise, table row repeats and tests also.

The right hand design view is for creating HTML content interspersed with
XML "fields" or logic "i.e. xsl-if test="...") using the XML tree.

It is a visual editor for creating XSL for XSL FO for variable content
documents. It would not be a good "styling mechanism for styling DITA
content. It is meant for creating variable documents.

We've added a few samples now and we will create many more for sure as we
continue to enhance this in the open source world.

Main Page: http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus
Documentation:
http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus.Editor?http://cdn.xportability.com/Samp
les/NimbusDoc.html

Invoice Sample:
http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus.Editor?http://cdn.xportability.com/Samp
les/Invoice.html
Benefit Statement Sample:
http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus.Editor?http://cdn.xportability.com/Samp
les/BenefitStatement.html

As you can see above, you can even have "samples" (as little HTML documents
in a special structure) that contain all the information in the design --
the XML, the HTML design, all the page layout information and all
parameters.

And the "left pane" has multiple parts -- the Data tab has the XML you load,
the Structure tab has the HTML structure in a tree format and a few other
tabs for variables and for page layout.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Giffin [mailto:mgiffin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2014 12:58 PM
To: kevin@renderx.com; RenderX Community Support List
Subject: Re: [xep-support] Sneek Peek Playground

Thanks Kevin, this is fascinating. I have a couple questions:

1. I tried to load a DITA XML file from the right pane and nothing happened.
When I tried to load the same file from the left pane I got this error:

"Oops! Are you sure this is an XML document? The system returned:
HierarchyRequestError: Failed to execute appendChild on Node: nodes of type
'task' may not be inserted inside nodes of type 'XMLDOCUMENT'."

But when I created a dead simple XML file, the left pane loaded it:

<root>
<p>this is some text.</p>
</root>

But the right pane does nothing when I try to load the simple file.

2. What is the relationship between the left pane and the right pane?
There seems to be no relationship. I expected loading a file in the left
pane to show something of it in the right pane, but obviously I'm mistaken.

Mark

On 11/24/2014 11:23 AM, Kevin Brown wrote:
> We are excited to offer up to everyone our newest, exciting project.
> "Nimbus @cloudformatter" is a new tool, based on a variety of HTML
> tools for creating XSL for XSL FO *in browser*.
>
> First, you must use Chrome (for now). We are working through some
> cross-browser issues.
> Second, it's a free and open source tool which we will publish to
> Github for all to have access to, maintain and contribute.
>
> It's free, it's not perfect, but we have already done some pretty cool
> documents.
> It leverages the CSS2PDF work we did before to interpret CSS to XSL FO.
> The XSL generated uses the CSS styles you specify directly or in
> included CSS files.
>
> It has some advanced concepts, because you are working in a browser it
> saves your work in browser cache as it goes, you can also export to
> cache and even disk. You can load from cache, disk or online so you
> can easily share complete templates (including sample XML, design and
> layout). In the Data tree, you can insert both "fields" as well as
> "logic" (i.e. xsl:value-of, xsl:if,
> xsl:choose/xsl:when/xsl:otherwise). You can also insert repeat items
> (xsl:for-each) for such things as table-rows or entire docoument
> sections (even the overall document itself).
>
> You can export the XSL for use and can preview the PDF rendered with
> your sample XML, the generated XSL through Cloudformatter which is
> RenderX's REST interface implemented in the Amazon Cloud.
>
> Live Interface:
> http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus.Editor
>
> This would load Nimbus with the last thing you were working on from
> your browser cache or default interface if nothing. You can use the
> "Data" tab to select an XML to import and see the "design" interface
> which is a customized version of the Summernote editor.
>
> Live Sample of an Invoice:
> http://www.cloudformatter.com/Nimbus.Editor?http://cdn.xportability.co
> m/Samp
> les/Invoice.html
>
> Note in this sample: use the Toggle View option to expose fields,
> repeats, logic and header/footer areas. Also note that you can easily
> share a design through such a URL.
>
> There is much to do, we have got it this far and it's time to open up
> to the world to contribute. We are adding a property grid so that CSS
> style and classes can be added with editing raw HTML. We also need to
> add namespace support and a few other things. We'll post to Github
> shortly so you can download and configure your own environment or you
> are always free to work on the online version. It will stay there for
> free
use by all.
>
> Feedback and help is welcome!
>
>
> Kevin Brown
> Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing RenderX, Inc.
> (650) 327-1000 Direct
> (650) 328-8008 Fax
> (925) 395-1772 Mobile
> skype:kbrown01
> kevin@renderx.com
> sales@renderx.com
> http://www.renderx.com
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Nov 30 15:09:11 2014

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