Part II, Chapter 5. Adding a custom conversion

Chapter 5. Adding a custom conversion

We'll explain how to add a custom conversion by using the following example: define a conversion called "refCardToPS" which allows to convert a quick reference card to PostScript using Apache FOP. The XSLT stylesheets needed to perform that conversion are found in /opt/quickrefcard/.

Before you begin

XMLmind XSL Server is assumed to have been configured in order to have a customization directory as explained in Specifying the customization directory of XMLmind XSL Server. In the following example, we'll suppose that this customization directory is E:\opt\xslsrv/.

Procedure

Start XMLmind XSL Utility by executing xslutil -p E:\opt\xslsrv &.
Click Add.
Click the Description tab and describe your conversion as follows.
Click the Transform tab and specify the location of the main XSLT stylesheet. While at it, add one or more XSLT stylesheet parameters.
Click the Process tab and choose FOP as your XSL-FO processor.
Click OK to close the dialog box.

Click Quit to quit XMLmind XSL Utility.

From now, you'll be able to perform a refCardToPDF conversion in addition to all the stock conversions.

Notice that stopping and then restarting XMLmind XSL Server was not needed in order to add a custom conversion.

Attention

May be you'll have to slightly modify your custom XSLT stylesheets in order to use them in XMLmind XSL Server. Let's use an example to explain a possible issue.

When you use XMLmind XSL Server to convert a remote document such as https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/demo/docbook/docbook-image.xml

to PDF or RTF , the server generates a temporary XSL-FO file on its host. Let's call this temporary file /tmp/xslu12345.fo.

By default, an XML element such as:

<imagedata fileref="graphics/fish1.png" 
           format="PNG"/>

is translated to something like:

<fo:external-graphic src="graphics/fish1.png"
                     content-type="content-type:image/png"/>

Unfortunately this cannot work because there is no /tmp/graphics/fish1.png file on the host running XMLmind XSL Server.

Instead, the above XML element should be translated to:

<fo:external-graphic
src="https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/demo/graphics/fish1.png"
content-type="content-type:image/png"/>

The dbToXXX and db5ToXXX conversion specifications pass a number of parameters such as img.src.path

to their XSLT stylesheets in order to get absolute URLs in the generated XSL-FO file. May be you'll have to add a similar facility to your own XSL stylesheets.⁽¹⁾.