Re: [ANNOUNCE] XSLT-process 2.2 available

[Ovidiu Predescu]

On Friday, Jan 10, 2003, at 16:21 US/Pacific, Richard Stallman wrote:

> > JDK is not free software.  Can XSLT-process work with a free Java
> > platform instead?
>
>     I haven't tested this. If the free Java platform has the necessary
>     support, I don't see any problem for Java portion of XSLT-process 
> to
>     run on it.
>
> That's exactly the question--do any free Java platforms have the
> necessary support?
>
> What Java features does the Java portion of XSLT-process need?

The Java portion of the code exercises primarily almost all the non-UI 
related classes in JDK, which should be fine for the free software 
implementations of the JDK.

> The free Java platforms support only part of what JDK supports.  We
> cannot assume that any given Java program will run on them.  The only
> way to find out is to try it.  Could you possibly try it and see?

Unfortunately right now I don't have enough spare time to work on 
testing this, but I'll put it on my list of things to do. If anybody is 
interested in testing this out, I'd be more than happy to support them.

> > (How does Java relate to this, anyway?)
>
>     Emacs acts as a front-end for the XSLT debugger written for the 
> Saxon
>     and Xalan XSLT processors.
>
> Unfortunately, I now know no more than before.  Which part of this is
> a Java program?  Did you write the Java program?  What is its name?

XSLT is a language for processing XML data input. An XSLT processor is 
an implementation of an interpreter for this language. Saxon and Xalan 
are two implementations of such interpreters written by Michael Kay and 
various Apache contributors respectively. XSLT-process is composed of 
two portions. The first portion is a Java program that hooks up with 
Saxon and Xalan to provide a command line debugger interface, very 
similar to how a C/C++ debugger works. The second portion is written in 
Emacs Lisp and provides a visual interface to the command line 
debugger. Both these portions were written by me and another 
contributor.

Best regards,
--
Ovidiu Predescu <address@hidden>
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q=ovidiu