The Questions: I have questions about a potential XML Utility Bundle for Windows. Details will follow. The questions are:
1) Does any think there will be an interest in this? 2) Is the name appropriate: "xmlutil" - that's what I called it at work. I've seen some Java XML Util docs on the net, but they all seems to by Java APIs and should not cause any confusion with this package. The Detail: At work, I packed up some utilities into an installer for Windows XP developers. The primary goal was for me (and a couple of other developers) to be able maintain program documentation in DocBook and easily install the needed utilities and stylesheets under Windows XP. The utilities are 1) libxml2, libxslt (primarily for xsltproc) for processing XSLT Stylesheets 2) DocBook XML Stylesheets (4.1.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.0) --- I think, I'm typing from memory 3) an XML Catalog file so all the stylesheets, etc can be found by the utilities. 4) the "DocBook The Definitive Guide" CHM files (4.x and 5.0) 5) Links to the "DocBock XSL: The Complete Guide". 6) The Microsoft CHM Compiler (hhc) so we can easily create CHM files from generated HTML 7) Some simple examples and a small manual (written, of course, in DocBook XML) Other utilities we have installed (but are _NOT_ part of my package) include: 1) MinGW or equivalent (for make, etc) 2) Apache FOP - for FO to PDF conversion 3) Saxon - for XQuery and as an alternative XSLT processor. I've tried to use this for the DocBook files, but still have not figured out how to get it to pay attention to the XML catalog files, so I gave up. I don't think it's appropriate to bundle MinGW functionality because most of the people that develop also have them anyway. However, I was considering adding FOP and Saxon to the list, with the caveat that users must have an appropriate JRE installed. Before I go through the work of cleaning it up, creating a SourceForge project, etc, I wanted to make sure I was not wasting my (and everyone else's) time. Since I use Makefiles and Ant to build XML docments using xsltproc, the builds (except for CHM files) work on Linux/Unix boxes as well. Feedback appreciated. Thanks. - Kevin Grover
