Setting up Windows XML Tools
Java ™
All the tools we will use in this
article are written in Java, so you will need a Java Runtime
Environment (JRE). You may obtain this at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/download.html.
You don’t need the Software Development Kit (SDK)
unless you plan on writing Java programs of your own. Follow the
instructions that come with the JRE and install it on your system.
Creating Directories
Create a directory named xmlapps on your
C: drive. This is where all the tools will go.
Create a directory named nutrition on your
C: drive. That is where you will save all the XML
files from this article.
The Multi-Schema Validator
You may download the Multi-Schema Validator (MSV)
from https://msv.dev.java.net/.
Unzip the file into the xmlapps directory that you
created above. It will create a directory which you may rename to
msv (if it is not already named that).
Now create a file named msvalidate.bat in your
nutrition directory, and paste the following text into
it:
java -jar c:\xmlapps\msv\msv.jar %1 %2
Xalan
You may download Xalan, a tool which is used to transform XML from one form to another, at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/index.html
Again, you will unzip the file into the xmlapps
directory. It will create a directory of the form
xalan-j_2_x_y where the x
and y are numbers that
depend upon which version you have downloaded. To make our
lives easier, just rename that directory to xalan-j
Now create a file named transform.bat in your
nutrition directory, and paste the following text
into it.
java -cp c:\xmlapps\xalan-j\bin\xml-apis.jar;c:\xmlapps\xalan-j\bin\xercesImpl.jar;c:\xmlapps\xalan-j\bin\xalan.jar org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN %1 -XSL %2 -OUT %3
FOP
FOP is a tool that takes documents written in
the XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language–Formatting Objects) markup
language, and converts them to PDF files.
You download it at
http://xml.apache.org/fop/index.html. Again, you unzip it into
the xmlapps directory. It will create a directory with
a name like fop-0.20.4 (or whatever the current version
number is). To make things easier, rename that directory to
fop.
Now copy the file fop.bat from the
fop directory to your
nutrition directory. You will have to change
all the paths in the command. Thus, where it says:
build\fop.jar;lib\batik.jar;
(etc.) you will have to add the prefix to where the XML apps are:
c:\xmlapps\fop\build\fop.jar;c:\xmlapps\fop\lib\batik.jar;
Batik
Batik is a toolkit that lets you manipulate documents written in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) markup language. You may download it at http://xml.apache.org/batik/. Be sure to get version 1.5 or greater (as of this writing, that is a beta version, but that’s OK).
Again, download it and unzip it into the xmlapps
directory. Rename the directory that it creates to
batik. Then, create a file named batik.bat in the
nutrition directory, and paste the following text into it.
java -jar c:\xmlapps\batik\batik-svgbrowser.jar %1