DocFlex/XML: docs/reports generator from XML files

FILIGRIS WORKS is pleased to announce even more advancement in the doc-generation technology. Now, DocFlex product family is extended by a new tool -- DocFlex/XML 1.0 -- a template-driven documentation/report generator by the data obtained from XML files.

• Product Summary
• Key Features
• Technical Requirements
• Freeware Edition
• DocFlex/XML Roadmap
• Screenshots
• Links

Product Summary

DocFlex/XML is the most advanced application of DocFlex Technology developed on top of the experience accumulated from the previous two: DocFlex/Javadoc and DocFlex/Together.

This tool allows you to visually design the automatic generation of professional quality reports and documentation by the data obtained from your XML files.

The output documents can be generated in RTF and HTML formats. The HTML can be both single-file and multi-framed documentation. The TXT (plain text) output is supported as well, which enables you to use this tool also for various XML file transformations

Such a generation works by interpreting special templates, which are created using a graphic Template Designer. The templates functionally behave similar to full-blown scripting-language programs (such as XSLT scripts). However, the advantage of the approach offered by DocFlex Technology is that it requires very few coding of anything manually and allows to design your templates in the WYSIWYG form.

The templates are designed basing on the information obtained from DTD or XML Schema files mostly by using mouse and specifying properties in Template Designer dialogs. The data type information (i.e. XML elements and attributes) appears in various treeviews which are used to program the data processing in the templates.

The formatting of the generated documents is programmed by specifying formatting properties of template components (some of which can be changed simply by dragging mouse in the designer pane). Many of such properties are graphically visualized by the Template Designer.

The output generator can be both launched from the command line and invoked directly from the Template Designer's main menu which allows you to immediately see the result produced by your templates yet during designing them.

Key Features

• The high quality graphic Template Designer
• The templates are designed basing on the data type information obtained from DTD or XSD (XML Schema) files.
• Data processing
  • The ability to generate reports/documentation by the data obtained from XML files.
  • A single report may contain data from multiple XML files with different structure.
  • Full support for XML namespaces.
  • Sophisticated capabilities for data querying and sorting based on an extension of XPath.
  • The ability to traverse XML documents with a network structure (using IDREF/IDREFS attributes)
• Inserting images
  • statically specified in templates
  • dynamically, obtained directly from XML documents (base64- or hex-encoded) or from arbitrary files, URLs or Java resources
  • supported image formats: GIF, PNG, JPG, WMF
• Creating hyperlinks
  • a common network of hyperlinks for the whole generated documentation
  • possibility to download several frame windows from a single hyperlink at once
• Output formats
  • HTML (both plain and multi-framed)
  • RTF
  • TXT (plain text)
  • XSL-FO (planned for version 2)
• Universal support for various formatting techniques
  • text formatting: fonts, colors, borders
  • paragraph formatting: margins, pagination control, borders, colors
  • border formatting: styles (solid, double, dashed, dotted), thickness, colors
  • tables: arbitrary cell layouts, borders, nested tables
  • lists: bulleted, numbered
  • document fields (RTF): page number, number of pages, TOC, etc.
  • page formatting: size, orientation, margins, headers/footers
  • formatting styles
  • rendering of embedded HTML, which means interpreting in non-HTML output formats (such as RTF) the HTML tags embedded in text data (e.g. documentation comments). Almost all HTML tags practically usable in doc-comments are supported.
• Project development
  • The ability to call templates from one another.
  • The elaborated support of template parameters.
  • Both features enable you to reuse the same templates for different tasks as well as organize template libraries, which may help you to shorten the project development time and simplify its further updates and maintenance.
  • The open Java API allows to launch the DocFlex generator directly from your Java code, pass template parameters as well as to extend your templates with custom written Java classes. (coming soon)
  • The freeware template interpreter and output generator (together with the run-time Java library) available for free use and redistribution both separately and as part of your applications.

Technical Requirements

DocFlex/XML (version 1.0) requires Java^TM 2 Version 1.4.x installed on your system.

To parse XML files, DTDs and XML Schemas, DocFlex/XML uses Apache Xerces2 Java Parser version 2.6.2.

Freeware Edition

The freeware edition, which is called “DocFlex/XML Generator”, includes only the template interpreter (output generator) without the Template Designer.

Currently, it also includes a set of "XML Documentor" templates (see Sample 1), which allow you to compiles any number of your XML files of any possible types into a nice looking printable (RTF) or framed (HTML) documentation. The templates are embedded as resources into the Java library file. So you can immediately start using it as an utility for documenting your raw XML files.

In the same way, we are planning eventually to enrich the freeware edition with some other sets of "heavyweight" templates dedicated to various big XML applications (the next are coming the "XML Schema Documentor" templates). See also DocFlex/XML Roadmap.

Basically, the freeware edition is intended for the following purposes:

• As a freeware documentation generator for several standard XML applications (using built-in templates).
• As a command line interpreter for your custom templates (however, only those created with the licensed full version).
• As a Java library, which will allow you to call processing of your custom templates directly from your Java code.

DocFlex/XML Roadmap

DocFlex/XML is a strategic product of Filigris Works. With this new tool, we are hoping eventually to reach a much wider audience of software developers and break people free truly to start using DocFlex Technology.

Currently, the product core is nearly complete. The finishing step will be publishing of DocFlex Open API which is going to appear in DocFlex/XML version 1.1 planned for release in a couple of weeks.

Shortly after that, basing on DocFlex/XML, we are planning to develop series of "heavyweight" templates dedicated to specific XML applications. The first of them should be:

1. The "XML Schema Documentor" templates, which will allow to generate a high quality documentation for XML Schemas.
2. The templates for XMI data sources, which together with DocFlex/XML itself effectively will provide a template-driven doc-generator for virtually any UML modeling tool.

What is coming then, you can imagine for yourself. Just look, for instance, at OASIS XML standards repository. All of this is a potential field for creating template-driven documentation generators based on DocFlex/XML!

And we believe, this is coming fairly soon, because designing DocFlex templates is pretty easy, nothing near to the efforts needed to develop an equal quality doc-generator for a particular XML application from the scratch!

Once the new application templates for a particular field arrive, those templates will be instantly included in the standard template library provided with DocFlex/XML.

By purchasing a license for DocFlex/XML, besides the ability to design your own templates, you will be able to customize all those library templates for your own needs. In effect, once having a license, you will be constantly delivered with an ever growing number of template-driven doc-generators for various big XML applications without paying anything extra for any of them!

That is the DocFlex/XML development roadmap. With this map, we invite you to travel the exciting landscape of XML applications together with us!

Screenshots

This screenshot shows the "XML Documentor" template loaded in the Template Designer with the generator dialog invoked and running the generation by this template (click to see in full size):

This are the pages of an RTF document produced with the "XML Documentor" template:

The following RTF demonstrates how DocFlex/XML can be used for a typical reporting task -- generating a financial/accounting report with some rows of figures and total sums:

Click here to see a screenshot of the template producing such a report. Find out more how this template works by the following link: http://www.filigris.com/products/docflex_xml/samples/sample2.php.

Links

This original article can be found at:
http://www.filigris.com/ann/docflex_xml_v1.0/

To find a lot more information about DocFlex/XML, please visit:
http://www.filigris.com/products/docflex_xml/

Try DocFlex/XML now:
http://www.filigris.com/downloads/