Advanced Stylesheet Design Features

StyleVision provides easy-to-use functionality for building the most advanced stylesheets and multi-channel reports, including:

Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs for business reports

Charts and graphs are an integral part of any business report, and StyleVision makes it easy to design stylesheets that include:

  • Pie charts (2D & 3D)
  • Bar and stacked bar charts (2D & 3D)
  • Category and value line graphs
  • Area and stacked area charts
  • Candlestick charts
  • Gauge charts

Interactive wizards make it easy to build dynamic charts to represent your XML, database, and XBRL data, and you have granular control over chart appearance through XPath data selection, full customization of chart appearances, background colors and images, and chart overlays to combine chart types.

You can even define interactive charts with drop down menus and other selectors.

You only have to define your charts and graphs once. Based on this single design, StyleVision will simultaneously publish your reports in HTML, Word/OOXML, RTF, and PDF.

Chart wizard for defining a chart/graph

XPath Editor and Evaluator

StyleVision makes it easy to define sophisticated conditional formatting for your reports and forms (as well as charts, as explained above) using XPath. Using the intelligent Edit XPath Expression dialog, you can define:

  • Conditional templates for variable layout and dynamic presentation that changes based on data in the source file(s).
  • Extension templates using XPath wildcards to create user-defined templates that can output a wide range of variable data based on the referenced XML source code.
  • Template filtering to automatically filter data out of stylesheet design output based on an XPath evaluated at runtime.
  • Auto-calculations to summarize tabular data or provide other functions in output or input stylesheet templates.
XPath editor for XSLT stylesheet designer

As you’re working, toggle between XPath Builder and XPath Evaluator modes to test and refine your expressions.

XPath Debugger

The XPath editor window includes an advanced XPath Debugger for testing XPath expressions.

An integrated XPath Debugger makes it easy to test and troubleshoot complex XPath expressions during report creation to save time and reduce frustration. Toolbar buttons let you go step by step through the evaluation of each XPath expression and examine the results returned for each step.

For a deeper dive into the StyleVision XPath Debugger check out this blog post.

Test and debug XPath in StyleVision

Generating Open XML

Office Open XML (also commonly known as OOXML or Open XML) is an XML-based specification for electronic documents and is the default file format for Word documents and other files used by the Microsoft Office Suite.

The DOCX format from the OOXML specification promises to offer increased information compatibility, integration, and transparency, as well as increased security. The WordprocessingML (WordML) vocabulary forms the basis for the DOCX format, while associated assets, including images, media, and formatting information, are packaged as separate files in a ZIP archive. However, generating Word documents in StyleVision shields you from these underlying details.

StyleVision makes Open XML development easy by allowing you to graphically design and implement XSLT stylesheets for generating conformant Word output from XML, XBRL, and/or database data. Every design you create in StyleVision automatically generates a Word (Open XML) document as well as HTML, PDF, and RTF documents.

Building Fillable PDF Forms

The advanced report design features of StyleVision can be used to build attractive, functional PDF forms for capturing end user data into XML or Adobe FDF (Forms Data Format).

Building a PDF form

Whether you start from scratch or base your form on existing Word document or paper form, it’s easy to drag and drop to create a user-friendly fillable PDF form that includes:

  • Input fields
  • Multi-line input fields
  • Check boxes
  • Radio buttons
  • Navigation functionality (Next page, Last page, etc.)
  • Reset
  • Print
  • Submit
Fillable PDF form

Once users fill in the PDF form, organizations can utilize the high-performance StyleVision Server to extract the entered data in XML or FDF format, where it can be saved for or processed further - for instance, to generate multi-channel reports based on the user-entered data.

Starting from a Word Document

To save time and give you a jumpstart on creating an attractive report or form design, StyleVision allows you to begin a project based on existing Word document. StyleVision preserves all the formatting and layout information defined in the Word doc, and it's easy to connect XML or database sources and continue refining the design as needed before generating HTML, PDF, and other outputs. You can even use a Word file as the basis for designing an Authentic enterprise form.

Similarly, you can paste static Word or Excel content into your design, or even begin a new design based on an existing Excel spreadsheet.

Visual Studio and Eclipse Integration

For XSLT stylesheet design inside your favorite IDE, StyleVision includes free integration packages for Visual Studio and Eclipse. These integration packages provide seamless access to all the powerful StyleVision report design and multi-channel publishing capabilities.

To take advantage of these integration options, first install StyleVision. Then download and install the Visual Studio or Eclipse integration package from the StyleVision download page.

Other Developer-oriented features

StyleVision has an intuitive and flexible visual design interface, and it also delivers the developer-oriented features required for enterprise-scale reports and forms, including: