XSLT stylesheet generation by example with WYSIWYG editing

Abstract

XSLT plays an important role in data conversions between different XML representations. However, besides the transformations between XML data representations, conversion to an HTML document is one of the most practical tasks for XSLT, because it allows XML documents to be rendered in a human-readable form using Web browsers. We have developed XSLbyDemo, which is an XSLT stylesheet generation module to be plugged into a commercially available full-fledged HTML authoring tool. The remarkable feature of XSLbyDemo is that users can create an XSLT stylesheet automatically solely on the basis of their knowledge of HTML editing. We briefly explain situations where stylesheets for XML rendering are needed. We then introduce the rule generation method based on the users' operation history recorded behind the WYSIWYG editor, and in particular explain the ways of generalizing the created rules so that the obtained rules can be applied to other documents slightly different from the original one. Finally, we give a practical example of the rules generation by XSLbyDemo, and demonstrate that our method can be used for not only the conversion but also the partitioning of a real-life HTML document into smaller pages represented with Compact HTML to be rendered on Web-enabled cellular phones such as i-mode phones.