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Visual XSLT Release Notes
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Installing Visual XSLT
Hardware and Software Prerequisites
ActiveState's Visual XSLT is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for
XSLT that runs as a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Before you can
install Visual XSLT, the following software must be installed on your system:
-
Microsoft
Visual Studio .NET 2002 or Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. Please review
the System Requirements for Visual Studio .NET before you proceed with the installation.
Visual XSLT has no additional requirements.
-
Windows
Script Host must be enabled on your system. In most cases, WSH is enabled
by default. To confirm, enter "wscript" at a command prompt. This should display the
Windows Script Host Settings dialog. If not, refer to the above link for
information on installing and enabling WSH.
Visual XSLT 2.0 does not function with beta or Release Candidate versions of Visual Studio .NET 2002
or Visual Studio .NET 2003.
Installing or Upgrading Visual XSLT
To install or upgrade Visual XSLT:
- Uninstall previous versions of Visual XSLT.
- Ensure that Visual Studio .NET is installed and operational on your system,
but not currently running.
Refer to Visual Studio .NET's installation instructions for information on
installing and upgrading Visual Studio .NET.
-
Download
Visual XSLT. Be sure to download the Visual XSLT installer that matches your
version of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.
- Ensure you are logged in to your system with an account that has administrative privileges.
Double-click the installation file and follow the instructions in the installer.
Uninstalling Visual XSLT
To uninstall Visual XSLT:
- From the Windows Control Panel, select Add/Remove Programs.
- Select ActiveState Visual XSLT,
and click Remove.
- If you installed the Visual XSLT license patch for a previous version, there will also be
an entry for ActiveState Visual XSLT Beta x Patch in the Add/Remove Programs
dialog. Select this item and click Remove.
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Visual XSLT Quick Start
Visual XSLT runs within Visual Studio .NET. Visual XSLT includes sample Visual Studio
solutions to help you get started. In the section below, you will open a sample project and
begin debugging.
- From the Windows Start menu, select Programs|ActiveState Visual XSLT|Samples|Birds.
(With some versions of Windows XP, you will be prompted with an "Open With..." dialog, where
you must specify the program (Visual Studio .NET) used to open Visual Studio files. Check
"Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" to set the preference permanently.)
Note: By default, Visual XSLT opens XML files in Visual Studio's Source Code Editor
(as opposed to the HTML/XML Editor). This provides breakpoint and synchronization
functionality during debugging. To open an XML file in the HTML/XML Editor, right-click the
file name in the Solution Explorer, select Open With..., and choose the desired editor.
- In the Solution Explorer pane, notice the solution called "birds", which
contains a "birds" project. There are two files stored in the Birds
project: "birds.xsl" and "birds.xml".
If the Solution Explorer window is not visible in the Visual Studio .NET workspace, select
View|Solution Explorer.
- Begin debugging. Press F11 (Debug|Step Into) to
begin, and continue through the document by pressing F11. Set breakpoints by
clicking in the grey margin to the left of the editor pane.
To view the input that the XSLT engine is currently processing, open the Watch window
(Debug|Windows|Watch) and enter a
period (".") in the Name field. To view the output from the transformation, open the Output window
(View|Other Windows|Output). (Ensure that
the "ActiveState Visual XSLT" option is selected in the drop-down list.)
Use our sample solutions to familiarize yourself with using Visual XSLT to edit
and debug XSLT programs. See the
Visual XSLT User Guide
for information about creating new solutions and projects, and using Visual XSLT's advanced editing and
debugging functions.
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What's New in Version 2.0
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XML Schema Mapper Generate
the essential structure of an XSLT file from XML schemas or instances by mapping with the mouse
from a source "schema" to a target "schema". The Schema Mapper supports XML schema files (.xsd) but
can also infer XML schemas from most well-formed XML instances.
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Just-In-Time Debugging Debug
XSLT scripts that are embedded in .NET applications and libraries. XSLT scripts in traditional unmanaged
Win32 applications can be debugged via COM interop.
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Folders in Projects In
previous versions of Visual XSLT, files could only be added to projects one-at-a-time. Visual
XSLT 2.0 adds support for importing folders containing multiple files, along with a "new folder"
command for creating project folders and subfolders in the Solution Explorer window.
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Release History
Version 1.8.1: June, 2003
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XML Files that are not contained in XSLT projects are opened using
Visual Studio's HTML/XML Editor, rather than the Source Code Editor.
XML files contained in XSLT projects are still opened using the Source Code
editor. You can only set breakpoints in XML files that are opened using the
Source Code Editor. To specify the editor that will be used to open an XML
file, right-click the XML filename in the Solution Explorer and select
Open With.... Then select either the HTML/XML Editor or the
Source Code (Text) Editor.
Version 1.8: April, 2003
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Visual Studio .NET 2003 is supported by this version of
Visual XSLT.
Version 1.7.9: March, 2003
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Visual Studio .NET 2003 RC 3 is supported by this version of
Visual XSLT.
Major Bug Fixes
- Previously, when Visual XSLT was set to use tabs instead of spaces, pressing
return with the cursor positioned in the leading white space sometimes deleted
characters.
- The integrity of the installer package has been strengthened so that it is
no longer possible to accidentally install two different versions of Visual
XSLT on the same system.
Version 1.6: December, 2002
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Tag
Matching Previous versions of Visual XSLT displayed
corresponding start and end tags by drawing a box around the tags when the
editing cursor was within one of the tags. Now, only the opening or closing
angle bracket of the start and end tags is highlighted in bold text.
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Undo The undo function will now undo auto-indentation, decreased line
indentation, "Comment Selection" and "Uncomment Selection" functions,
and "Format Document" and "Format Selection" functions.
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Smart
Indenting has been enhanced to take special indentation cases into
account.
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Outlining
This version supports outlining (code folding) for multi-line start tags,
processing instructions and comments.
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Encoding
When a transform is run using the system.xml engine, the output will be
encoded according to the encoding specified in the XSLT program. The Xalan
engine still generates output in UTF-8, regardless of the specified encoding.
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Project File Format The project file format has changed. Existing projects will be
automatically converted to the new format when they are opened. A backup
copy of the original project will be made in the same directory as the
original project file.
Version 1.5.1: September, 2002
- Statement-completion was causing a large memory leak. This has been fixed.
- The Show Template Matches context menu item had a dependency on
Visual Perl, which has been fixed.
- Watch expressions are now namespace-aware.
Version 1.5: July, 2002
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Support for
.NET Extension Objects In previous versions, you couldn't
run or debug XSLT scripts that contained extension objects
that relied on arbitrary .NET objects. This version supports extension objects,
which are added to XSLT projects using the Solution Explorer.
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XPath Workshop
Test XPath expressions against the current set of XML documents in the project,
without having to start the debugger.
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Template Match Window
Easily find all points in XML input that will be
processed by a given template rule.
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XPath IntelliSense
Inside XPath expressions, pressing Ctrl-J or Alt-right-arrow brings up a statement completion
box containing the built-in XPath names.
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Schema IntelliSense
Visual XSLT provides pop-up lists of legal values for XML schemas defined in namespaces.
Version 1.5 Beta 1: June, 2002
See the description for the 1.5 final release for a list of new features included
in version 1.5 Beta 1.
Version 1.2: January, 2002
Version 1.1.2: November, 2001
- Various bug fixes and stability enhancements
Version 1.1.1: October, 2001
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Visual Studio .NET Release Candidate This release of Visual XSLT
supports Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET Release Candidate. Visual Studio .NET Beta 2 users
should download Visual XSLT version 1.1.
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MSXSL Support
Visual XSLT now supports Microsoft's MSXSL engine.
Version 1.1: October, 2001
- General bug fixes and stability enhancements
Version 1.01: September, 2001
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Windows XP Support Visual XSLT now runs on Windows XP
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XSLT Dynamic Help Visual
XSLT 1.01 includes an XSLT language reference deployed through Visual Studio's Dynamic Help system.
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Add Entries to the Task List
Comments embedded in the XSLT program can be automatically added to the Visual Studio Task List.
Version 1.0: August, 2001
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Source Code Control
Visual XSLT includes SCC-compliant source code control. If SCC-compliant source code
control software is installed on your system, Visual XSLT will inherit Visual Studio's source control
functionality, and provide the ability to work with items stored in a source code repository.
Release Candidate 1: August, 2001
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Class View Visual XSLT now makes use of Visual Studio .NET's
Class Viewer. To invoke the Class View, select View|Class View.
Class View is used to quickly navigate an XSLT document; the Class View form shows
all templates defined under each stylesheet.
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Namespace Awareness
Visual XSLT now provides pop-up tips for namespaces based on the context of the document.
Beta 3: June, 2001
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Synchronized Debugging
while debugging, Visual XSLT will indicate the current line
in both the XSL program and the XML input file.
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XML Breakpoints you can set breakpoints
in both the XML input file and the XSLT program. See
Configuring Projects
for further information.
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Code
Folding Visual XSLT recognizes discrete block of code, and provides
visual cues that indicate where blocks of code can be collapsed and expanded.
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Improved Call Stack while debugging, the Call Stack window displays the function name,
line number and file for each stack frame in the program. You can control whether to show filenames
and / or line numbers by right-clicking in the Call Stack window and checking the corresponding entries.
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Hex Values during Debugging while debugging, the debugging windows (Watch, Locals, etc)
now display numeric values in hex format.
Beta 2: May, 2001
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IntelliSense context-sensitive tips for template names and XML entities are displayed as you type.
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HTML Preview view output when "Start Without Debugging" produces HTML output.
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Three-Pane Debugger View watch the XML input, XSLT program, and output as the debug session
runs.
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Remote Code and Data Debugging specify URLs as project items that can be pre-fetched on
project load.
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Save Output Window Contents save the contents of the Output window to a file.
Beta 1: March, 2001
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Smart Indenting nested elements, start elements, end elements, and empty
elements are indented consistently.
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Element Tips appropriate start elements are suggested as you type.
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Auto Completion pop-up tips suggest names of XSLT elements in the correct context.
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Attribute Name Tips lists of valid attribute names pop up when you enter an element.
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Attribute Value Tips lists of valid attribute values pop up when you enter an attribute name.
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Watch Window view parts of the input tree as it is walked by the XSLT program.
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Output Window the transformation in progress is displayed as it occurs.
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License
Visual XSLT licenses can be obtained from the
ActiveState
web site. Two license types are available: a twenty-one day Evaluation License, and a
Commercial License.
The Visual XSLT End User License Agreement is displayed during the Visual
XSLT installation. It is also stored in RTF format in the Visual XSLT
installation directory (by default,
c:\Program Files\ActiveState VisualXSLT\doc).
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Known Issues in Visual XSLT
- In Visual Studio .NET 2002, when copying a collapsed section of code, if
you undo immediately after the copy (without expanding the folded section) Visual Studio .NET
may crash. To prevent the crash, wait for a moment before undoing, or expand the collapsed
section.
- Only one instance of the Visual XSLT debugger can be running on your system at one
time. While you can have multiple instances of Visual XSLT open, the debugger can only be
running in one of those instances.
- Some versions of Windows XP do not recognize the file association between Visual Studio .NET solution files
and the Visual Studio .NET program. Therefore, when XP users open a solution file (with an .sln
extension) from the Windows Start menu or from Windows Explorer, they are prompted to select
the desired program (Visual Studio .NET) to open the file.
- Conditional breakpoints are not yet implemented.
- Watch points (breakpoints that are triggered when the value of a specified
expression changes) are not yet implemented.
- Under some circumstances, breakpoints become "stuck". However, they will
disappear after the debugger is stopped and restarted.
- The message "cannot show this line" is occasionally displayed while debugging.
- You can only set breakpoints in the input
file if the XML file is loaded using the Source Code Editor (as opposed to the HTML/XML Editor).
See Breakpoints
for more information.
- If the input XML file or the XSL transformation file contains errors, the debugger may appear to
hang, or may report an erroneous error message. Click Debug|Stop to stop the
transformation, then fix the bugs by using the Task List (View|Other Windows|Task List)
and the Run (Debug|Start without Debugging) functions to identify the errors.
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Contact ActiveState
Visual XSLT Announcements: to receive announcements via email regarding Visual XSLT, subscribe to the
Visual XSLT Announcement list. See the
Visual XSLT Announcement Message Archive to view previous notices.
Visual XSLT Discussions: to participate in email discussions regarding Visual XSLT, subscribe to the
Visual XSLT Discussion list. See the
Visual XSLT Discussion Message Archive to view previous discussion threads.
Visual XSLT Questions and Comments: send email to the
Visual XSLT Feedback mailing list.
Visual XSLT Bugs: to view and report Visual XSLT bugs, visit the
Visual XSLT bug database.
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Copyright © 2001
ActiveState Corp.
Portions Copyright © 1987-2003, Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved. IntelliSense® is a Registered Trademark of Microsoft.
Other companies and products mentioned in
this document are the property of those companies.
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