XSL Tools Requirements

What should the initial requirements be for XSL Tools 1.0 release. Note that not all ideas will necessarily make it into the first release. Please use this page to make your suggestions as well as enter an enhancement request in the Web Tools Incubator component. If you do make a bug/enhancment request, please put the bug number here and link to it as well.

XSL Tool Features Requests

Launching

• bug 213855 - XSLT shouldn't rely on JDT to function, particularly for XSL Launching configurations as every XSL transformer extension could have a differen requirement to launch. Potentially the XSL transformer could be non-java based.
• Launching should be able to run either a simple pipeline or a more complex pipeline using XProc as the configuration language. An yac is an example of an xproc processor.

• Possibly have pre-existing Launch configurations that can be modified for Docbook, Dita, and Schematron launching.

Debugging

• Ability to view the Nodes that are in a result set/node set.

• Ability to put break points in both the source xslt as well as the xml input file.

• Ability to put break points in any stylesheet that is included or imported, and have it stop at the break point.

• See all variables that are currently in scope for the xslt being debugged.

• bug 213850 Ability to set the XML Input before Debugging begins, if launched from Debug As-> and no existing launch configuration has been created.

• bug 213766 Make sure line and column numbers are displaying in the xml editor when in debug mode.

Editor

• bug 195028, bug 213852, bug 213854 - Content Assitance for all XSL elements that are in the namespace. It would also be nice to have content assistance automatically for any other namespaces that are known.
  • Some of this is already possible through the use of XML Catalog contributions, as the XML Editor will pickup any grammars that it finds and knows about in the XML Catalog that are in the source document.

• bug 201954 - XPath creation, editing, and testing support.

• bug 213775 - Configurable syntax highlighting for XSL. Allow differentiation between XSL elements and those not part of the XSL transformation namespace.

• XPath support should have content assistances for select, match, and test attributes. This should provide AXIS as well as XPath function expressioin support. Along with any appropriate documentation for each of the functions.

• Templates - we should provide a list of commonly used XSL templates both for new files and for attributes and elements.

• Variable content assistance - When referencing a variable or parameter, we should provide content assistance for any variables or parameters that are in scope.

• If a variable or paramater is unknown, CTRL-1 should provide available suggestions.

• Make sure any compilation errors are highlighted with red squiggleys. Color of squiggleys should change depending on the severity of the error. Yellow for warning, red for error.

• Provide template support for Call-Templates. If creating/defining/calling a named template, content assistance should be availble for the name attribute, providing a list of suggested names either have no template defined, or already have a template defined depending on the location where content assist was invoked.

• Validation should not necessarily occur on all grammars in the XSLT, as this could lead to false errors, as XSLT templates will be inserted into elements that may not be expecting them. This is not an error itself.

• Provide a view with the availability of all XPath functions or nodes that could be used at that particular point. Drag and Drop support would be nice to be added to the editor.

• Possibly create just a Source editor for XSLT, as the existing Design view doesn't necessarily work well for XSLT development. Or create a new design view that allows graphical creation of an XSLT based on existing grammars or an existing XML instance.

• Provide out of the box support for XSL templates for DITA, DocBook, and SchemaTron.

• Provide basic refactoring support.

Validation

• The ability to specify what should be validated and what shouldn't be validated.

• Batch Validation of XSLTs in a directory.

• How are XSLT's validated that may depend on external URI sources?