Capstone's XML Tools

We try to define reliable environments for all our courses that rely on free software. Since there are no sanctioned reference implementations for W3C recommendations, we have developed our own tools to support study of XML, Schema, XSLT and XPath. These are designed specifically to support training using our XML courseware, but they are also useful, lightweight development tools on their own.

XML and XML Schema Courses

For our XML and Schema courses, we provide the XML Validator, a simple command-line wrapper over the Xerces/J parser that is easily integrated into code editors such as Crimson and TextPad for a nice lightweight "IDE" for studying XML. It supports commands to parse for well-formedness, to validate against a DTD or XML Schema, and to validate an XML Schema document.

XPath, XSLT, and XSLFO Courses

For our XSLT and XSLFO courses we have developed the XML Transformer, which includes both a command-line XSLT engine and a simple, Java-based "console" application that acts as a mini-IDE of its own, allowing students to load XML documents and XSLT transforms, edit them in place and easily see and save the results; there is also a tab for testing XPath expressions.