Hi Maria,



At 05:24 PM 5/2/2005, you wrote:
I am migrating a set of stylesheets from a Microsoft to a Java environment.
The stylesheets were originally written for the MSXML4 parser, but now they
are going to use Xalan-Java.

I'd like to install Xalan-Java for Windows on my desktop so that I can view
transformations locally. So far I have downloaded the current Xalan-Java
binary (xalan-j-current-bin.zip) as well as the Java 2 SDK
(j2sdk-1_4_2_08-windows-i586-p.exe). I'm not sure what to do next.

I'm not an XSL newbie but I am new to Java.

Well there's no such thing as "Xalan-Java for Windows", that's the first 
lesson. Java is Java, on any platform. :->



Unfortunately, since Xalan is just like most any other Java application, 
your question isn't really an XSL question, but sits on the edge.



But: you need to install and run a JVM (Java Virtual Machine), an 
application which in effect provides a little computer to run Java bytecode 
(the stuff you get when you download Xalan), inside your computer.



Once you've installed the Java SDK and unzipped Xalan, you can invoke Xalan 
from a command line -- Xalan docs give info on how to do that: see

http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/commandline.html



The part you'll probably find confusing is the "classpath" bit. A good 
beginner's book to Java can help, but basically this is a matter of telling 
Java where to find Xalan. So for example if you have an environment 
variable XALANHOME you might say



java -cp 
%XALANHOME%/xalan.jar;%XALANHOME%/xml-apis.jar;%XALANHOME%/xercesImpl.jar 
-IN foo.xml -XSL foo.xsl -OUT foo.out



which will load Xalan and use it to transform 'foo.xml' into 'foo.out' 
using 'foo.xsl'. (The "-cp" flag indicates the classpath.)



If you're accomplished with shell scripts (e.g., on Windows, DOS batch 
files) you'll find that knowledge will come in handy for saving you from 
repetitive typing. People frequently load entire classpaths into 
environment variables; in my case I have so much Java all over my system 
that I tend to wrap these up into scripts.



Alternatively, you could try an XML/XSLT editing environment like oXygen, 
which installs in Windows, is written in Java, and runs Xalan for its 
transformations (you can also run Saxon in it if you like). This is a 
reasonably-priced editor that sets it all up for you: 
www.---.com. (I'd make sure your machine has the horsepower to 
do this, however - it runs okay in a 1GHz processor w/ 384MB RAM.)



Or you could try www.---.com/, which isn't very 
fully-featured, and requires more in the way of setup. But it does wrap 
things up for you -- and the price is right.



Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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