Thoughts on a concept to ease and speed xproc development

Hi,

Idea:

The process of a user developing with xproc is constrained in that xproc
essentially provides a wrapper to execute other processes such as p:xslt
with some other limited yet useful abilities. Given this constraint I
wonder if the design can be improved to harness an effective development
strategy that both reduces lines of code and speeds development.

Explanation:

A while back I decided to create a tweak of the p:xslt step which basically
combines

1. A version of logging that has a boolean value to turn off the log to let
me know that process has got to that p:xslt step when debugging

     <mh:log>
       <p:with-option name="message" select="'���
NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure'"/>
       <p:with-option name="logging" select="$logging"/>
      </mh:log>


2.  a p:store with a boolean to write the xml file or not preserving the
state of the content prior to the p:xslt for later debugging the p:xslt

     <mh:save-output
step-name="debugNormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure">
         <p:with-option name="save" select="$debug"/>
         <p:with-option name="href"
select="concat($debug-output-folder,'Debug-Begin-NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure.xml')"/>
      </mh:save-output>

3.  p:xslt

 <p:xslt name="NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure" version="1.0">
       <p:input port="stylesheet">
        <p:document
href="../xslt/begin/NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure.xsl"/>
       </p:input>
       <p:with-param name="svnRevision" select="$svnRevision"/>
       <p:input port="parameters">
        <p:empty/>
       </p:input>
   </p:xslt>

Combining them resulted in:

 <mh:xxslt name="NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure" version="1.0"
mh:doc="Create the intial Document structure">
       <p:with-option name="debug" select="$debug"/>
       <p:with-option name="logging" select="$logging"/>
       <p:with-option name="debugPathAndFileNamePrefix"
select="concat($debug-output-folder,'Begin-')"/>
       <p:input port="stylesheet">
        <p:document href="filename.xsl"/>
       </p:input>
       <p:with-param name="svnRevision" select="$svnRevision"/>
 </mh:xxslt>

( Also removed the empty  <p:input port="parameters"> )

This:
 1. Greatly improved the readability of my code and shaved ~800 lines of
code out of around 3000.
 2. Is useful because when debugging a particular p:xslt because the input
file is easily available if I set debug to be true and run the process.

--
But wait there's more... ;)

So assuming xproc steps that execute some other external process to modify
the xml such as a p:xslt would in future versions provide the extra
abilities, to log that you've arrived at that ___location, output what the
content is before arriving both using debug values, there are some
enhancements and development consequences that result.

1. Given that a unique p:xslt step
name="NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure" exists it can be used to
specify the file name of the xml file that is being written out to be used
later as debug input in a transformation scenario. Currently I'm using the
name of the xslt file and then add the debug folder ___location with a prefix
to be unique. I suppose I had not at the time thought of using the step
name (and well I'm not sure that name is available in calabash code, I
haven't checked)

       <p:with-option name="debugPathAndFileNamePrefix"
select="concat($debug-output-folder,'Begin-')"/>

2. Automatic build of Oxygen project file with transformation scenarios

A script could converts an xpl + parameter file into an oxygen project
scenario with parameters all configured. This would be useful as a
developer. All the information to do this exists outside of oxygen given
this concept and yet unless you agree on some concept like the one I'm
describing at least I don't think Oxygen developers would have a way of
currently making such a nice automation feature.

--

Given all this generally to ensure that some concept like this would work 3
extra elements would be required. Perhaps like so

 <p:xslt name="NormalizeContentAndCreateInitalXMlStructure" version="1.0"
mh:doc="Create the intial Document structure">
       <p:output-debug-file select="$debug"/>
       <p:output-log select="$logging"/>
       <p:debug-folder select="$debug-output-folder"/>
       <p:stylesheet href="filename.xsl">
         <p:with-param name="svnRevision" select="$svnRevision"/>
      </p:stylesheet>
 </p::xxslt>


I suppose they could be optional as well which then would just result in
the false case and loss of described functionality.

       <output-debug-file select="false"/>
       <output-log select="false"/>

--

Thoughts?



-- 
-

Alex
http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/alex-muir/36/ab7/125

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