StyleVision Professional Edition 2007 SP2

Altova StyleVision is the ultimate visual stylesheet designer that allows you to transform database and XML content into HTML, PDF and Word/RTF output and to create Authentic electronic forms.
Altova® StyleVision® 2007 Professional Edition is an application for graphically designing and editing StyleVision Power Stylesheets. A StyleVision Power Stylesheet (SPS) can be used for the following purposes:
- To control a graphical WYSIWYG view of XML documents in Authentic View, which is an XML document editor available in the following Altova products: Altova XMLSpy, Altova StyleVision, Altova Authentic Desktop, and Altova Authentic Browser.
- To enable the editing of databases (DBs) via Authentic View and to generate database reports in HTML format.
- To generate XSLT stylesheets based on the SPS design. (Both XSLT 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 are supported.) The XSLT stylesheets can be used outside StyleVision to transform XML documents into outputs such as HTML.
- To generate, directly from within StyleVision, HTML output from an XML document. In the case of DB-based SPSs, StyleVision can additionally generate, for each SPS, an XML Schema based on the DB and an XML instance document that adheres to this schema and contains data from the DB.
Main features:
General product features
- Multiple SPS designs can be open simultaneously, with one being active at any given time. Each SPS design is shown in a separate tab.
- While designing the SPS, Authentic View and output views can be displayed by clicking the respective tabs. This enables you to quickly preview the output and test Authentic View features.
- When an SPS is associated with an XML source document or source DB, the source document can be edited directly in the Authentic View of StyleVision.
- DB reports can either be viewed in StyleVision or saved as an HTML file.
- Both XSLT versions (1.0 and 2.0) are supported. XSLT 2.0 provides powerful data access and manipulation features.
- In the Enterprise Edition, multiple output formats (HTML, RTF, and PDF) are generated from a single SPS design.
- Conditions can be set on SPS components to process them differently for different outputs. With this level of granularity, different outputs can be flexibly structured to take in the requirements of that particular output.
- Both XSLT files and output files can be generated and saved, either directly from within the GUI or by calling StyleVision from the command line.
- HTML documents can be converted to XML.
SPS design features
- The SPS can contain static text, which you enter in the SPS, and dynamic text, which is selected from the source document .
- Dynamic content is inserted in the design by dragging-and-dropping nodes from the schema source.
- Dynamic content can be inserted as text, or in the form of a data-entry device (such as an input field or combo box). When inserted as a data-entry device such as a combo box, additional possibilities are available. For example, the value of the node can be selected (by the Authentic View user) from a list of enumerations.
- The structure of the design is specified and controlled in a single main template. This structure can be modified by optional templates for individual elements—known as global templates because they can be applied globally for that element.
- A common feature of XML documents is the repeating data structure. For example, an office department typically has several employees. The data for each employee would be stored in a data structure which is repeated for each employee. In the SPS, the processing for each such data structure is defined once and applied to each relevant node in turn (the employee node in our example).
- Repeating data structures can also be inserted as dynamic tables. This provides looping in a structured, table format, with each loop through the data structure producing a row (or, if required, a column) of the table.
- A repeating element can be sorted on one or more sort-keys you select, and the sorted element set is sent to the output (HTML).
- The conditional templates feature enables one of a set of templates to be processed according to what conditions in the XML document or system environment are fulfilled. This enables processing that is conditional on information contained in the source document or that cannot be known to the SPS document creator at the time of creation (for example, the date of processing). The available conditions are those that can be tested using XPath 1.0 or XPath 2.0 expressions.
- Auto-Calculations enable you to manipulate data from the source document/s and to display the result. This is useful, when you wish to perform calculations on numbers (for example, sum the prices in an invoice), manipulate strings (for example, change hyphens to slashes), generate content, etc. The available manipulations are those that can be effected using XPath 1.0 or XPath 2.0 expressions.
- When data is edited in Authentic View, the result of Auto-Calculations can also be passed to a node in the source document. This procedure is referred to as updating the XML node (with the value of the Auto-Calculation).
- Additional validation enables individual XML document nodes to be validated (additionally to schema validation) against an XPath expression defined for that node. In this way, Authentic View users can be alerted when the data they enter is invalid; a customized error message for the node can indicate the problem.
- Images can be inserted in the design. The URI for the image can be static (entered in the SPS), or dynamic (taken from a node in the source document), or a combination of both static and dynamic parts.
- Two types of lists can be created: static and dynamic. In a static list, each list item is defined in the SPS. In a dynamic list, a node is created as a list item; the values of all instances of that node are created as the items of the list.
- Static and dynamic links can be inserted in the design. The target URI can be static (entered in the SPS), or dynamic (taken from a node in the source document), or a combination of both static and dynamic parts.
- Static bookmarks can be inserted. These serve as anchors that can be linked to with a hyperlink.
- Parameters can be declared globally for the entire SPS. A parameter is declared with a name and a string value, and can be used in XPath expressions in the SPS. The parameter value you declare is the default value and can be overridden by a value passed from the command line.
- With the Input Formatting feature, the contents of numeric XML Schema datatype nodes can be formatted as required for Authentic View display and, in the case of some formats, optionally for output. Input Formatting can also be used to format the result of an Auto-Calculation.
- JavaScript functions can be used in the SPS to provide user-defined functionality for Authentic View and HTML output.
- A number of predefined HTML formats are available via the GUI and can be applied to individual SPS components.
- A large number of CSS text formatting and layout properties can be applied to individual SPS components via the Styles entry helper.
- Additionally, CSS styles can be defined for HTML selectors at the global level of an SPS and in external CSS stylesheets. These style rules will be applied to Authentic View and HTML output, thus providing considerable formatting and layout flexibility.
- Styles can also be assigned using XPath expressions. This enables style property values to be selected from XML documents and to set property values conditionally.