xslt-process-mode and Saxon 8

thalliley · October 10th, 2005, 07:20 AM

As far as I can tell, no one has upgraded xslt-process(-mode) to work with Saxon 8. I'm willing to help, if Mike Kay or someone else can give me an idea where to start and what's involved. :)

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mhkay · October 10th, 2005, 09:16 AM

Don't expect any help from me, I had to google to find out what xslt-process-mode is, and I'm not an emacs convert.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

thalliley · October 10th, 2005, 09:27 AM

Here's a response I had previously gotten from Tony Addyman:

> How tough is it to get Saxon 8.0 working with xslt-process-mode? Adding
> the .jar file in place of saxon-6.5.2.jar (and extending the classpath)
> doesn't work.
> Has the interface to Saxon itself changed?

I don't know. I guess Mike Kay would know. The debugger in xslt-process
goes beyond the normal APIs to achieve some of things it needs to do.
From memory we had to make changes to the Java code most times a new
version of Saxon was supported.

-----------------

I'd guess it's a matter of seeing what's changed in the top-level Java APIs to Saxon. Mike ... don't happen to have a deltas document/release notes do you?

[email protected]

thalliley · October 10th, 2005, 11:40 AM

Looks like the core issues are how the following classes map from Saxon 6.x to Saxon 8.x:

Code:

     com.icl.saxon.Context      ---> net.sf.saxon.???
     com.icl.saxon.NodeHandler  ---> net.sf.saxon.???

Most changes seem to be a refactoring into different packages. No problem. A few other methods changed, or indirections needed to get information required for a debugger. Fixed those too.

Anyone happen to know these particular mappings?

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mhkay · October 10th, 2005, 12:14 PM

Context is now net.sf.saxon.expr.XPathContext

NodeHandler doesn't exist any more. Need to understand how and why it was being used.

It may be better to move this to the Saxon list. There may be someone there who is familiar with the history.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

thalliley · October 10th, 2005, 03:19 PM

It looks like

Code:

   com.icl.saxon.trace.TraceListener.enterSource(NodeHandler handler, Context context)
   com.icl.saxon.trace.TraceListener.leaveSource(NodeHandler handler, Context context)

are now

Code:

   net.sf.saxon.trace.TraceListener.enter(InstructionInfo instuction)
   net.sf.saxon.trace.TraceListener.leave(InstructionInfo instuction)

so NodeHandler is resolved.

It looks like

Code:

   com.icl.saxon.Context

might be replaced by

Code:

   net.sf.saxon.instruct.InstructionDetails

Am I on the right track?

[email protected]

mhkay · October 10th, 2005, 03:33 PM

The diagnostic interfaces into Saxon have changed very substantially between 6.5.x and 8.5. I've no idea what this code does so it's hard to assess the impact, but it might involve significant redesign. In some ways there's a lot more information available to the TraceListener now, but in other ways there's less information because Saxon is no longer interpreting the source stylesheet tree, it's now driven from an internal expression tree which is several steps removed from what the user originally wrote, and which, for example, represents XSLT instructions and XPath expressions using common constructs regardless how they appeared in the source. Don't expect to get this working without some detailed study of Saxon internals and some thorough testing over a range of stylesheets.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

thalliley · October 11th, 2005, 11:01 AM

Thanks, Michael. This is what I was looking for.

[email protected]