RenderX XSL file

Question

I installed RenderX and found XEP Assistant when hit x4u.bat file. We can select available XML and XSL file and based on that we can generate PDF using XEP Assistant. but if i want to edit the XML or XSL where and what functionality is available in RenderX. How to write XML or XSL/XSLFO code in RenderX.

And how to run and what is the process for XEP.bat file for any XML or XSL.

Answer 1

The XEP command line (xep.bat) shows this if you execute:

xep -help

Here are all the options:

C:\Program Files\RenderX\XEP>xep -help
   XEP 4.24.444
   java com.renderx.xep.XSLDriver
   {<option>}
   {-quiet | -version | -valid | -hosted | -help}
   ( [-xml] <infile> [-xsl <stylesheet>] {-param <name=value>}
     | -fo <infile>
     | -xep <infile> )
   [-f]
   [[-<output format>] <outfile>]
   Available output formats: ppml (PPML), xps (XPS), at (XEP), pdf (PDF), afp (AFP), html (HTML), svg (SVG), ps (Postscript), xep (XEP).

So a typical command line would be for an input XML and XSL and desiring PDF output:

xep -xml path/to/myxml.xml -xsl path/to/myxsl.xsl -pdf

RenderX is an XSL FO formatting engine. It does not provide tools for you to edit XML, XSL or XSL FO. You can use many tools to do so, the most popular would be oXygen I would say. You can in fact add XEP as a formatter in oXygen very easy through their menus by just selecting your xep.bat location.

Answer 2

@kevin-brown may be able to answer this better, but you generally would edit your XML and XSLT in an XML editor such as oXygen XML Editor.

You generally don't edit XSL-FO directly. 99.99% of the time, the XSL-FO is a transient document that is the result of transforming other XML into the XSL-FO vocabulary. The most common reason for editing XSL-FO directly is when you are trying things out. oXygen has the best XSL-FO editing support that I know of (but I would say that, since I wrote the focheck framework that it uses). Next best would be Emacs (also using focheck).