xdocs/sources/xalan/faq.xml

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<!DOCTYPE faqs SYSTEM "../../style/dtd/faqs.dtd">

<faqs title="Frequently asked questions">

<faq title="Where do I go to learn about XSLT">  
<q>Where do I go to learn about XSLT?</q>
<a><p>The definitive sources are the W3C XSLT and XPath recommendations: <resource-ref idref="XSLT"/> and 
      <resource-ref idref="XPath"/>.</p>
   <p>For a brief listing of tutorials, discussion forums, and other materials, see <link idref="overview"
      anchor="uptospeed">Getting up to speed with XSLT</link>.</p>
</a>
</faq>
  
<faq title="Asking questions about &xslt4c;">
<q>Where can I ask a question?</q>
<a><p>For specific questions on &xslt4c;, see list archives: 
   <jump href="http://marc.info/?l=xalan-c-users">xalan-c-users</jump>
   and <jump href="http://marc.info/?l=xalan-dev">xalan-dev</jump>.
   You must subscribe to these Apache mailing lists before posting your questions.</p>
<p>The Apache Software Foundation has information on how you can subscribe to
   the <jump href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/mailinglists.html">mailing lists</jump>.</p>
<p>You can post messages to the lists by sending mail to:<br/>
   <jump href="mailto:c-users@xalan.apache.org">Post message to xalan-c-users</jump>. (User's list)<br/>
   <jump href="mailto:dev@xalan.apache.org">Post message to xalan-dev list</jump>. (Developer's list)</p>
<p>Again, please review the archives before posting a new question.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="What is &xml4c;?">
<q>What is &xml4c; and why do I need it?</q>
<a><p>&xml4c; is a validating XML parser written in a portable subset of C++. &xml4c; makes it easy to give your application the ability 
      to read and write XML data. Like &xslt4c;, &xml4c; is available from the Apache XML site:  
      <jump href="http://xerces.apache.org/index.html">http://xerces.apache.org</jump></p><!--xml4cNote--></a>
</faq>

<faq title="Which version of Xerces should I be using?">  
<q>Which version of Xerces should I be using?</q>
<a><p>The &xslt4c; release notes includes information about the &xml4c; release with which the &xslt4c; release has been coordinated 
      and tested. See <link idref="whatsnew" anchor="status">Status</link></p><!--xml4cNote--></a>
</faq>

<faq title="Should I be using the Xerces DOM or Xalan DOM?">
<q>Should I be using the Xerces DOM or Xalan DOM?</q>
<a><p>The Xalan DOM implementation is highly optimised for transformations.  However, whilst you can build documents in the Xalan DOM, 
      subsequent modification will not work.  The Xalan DOM is designed to be either an input or an output from a transformation, not 
      as a general DOM implementation.</p>
   <p>So in cases where you want to simply transform documents using Xalan, using the internal DOM implementation is the best approach.</p>
   <p>In cases where you want to modify the DOM document on the fly, you should use the Xerces DOM as the base document.  You can wrap 
      the Xerces DOM in a wrapper (see  <link idref="usagepatterns" anchor="xercesdomwrapperparsedsource"> passing in a Xerces DOM</link>) 
      to then use as an input to a Xalan transformation.  Alternatively you can output the result of a transformation to a Xerces DOM 
      document (see <link idref="usagepatterns" anchor="dom">working with DOM input and output</link>).  In either case, the Xerces document 
      can be freely modified.  However, after you modify the document, you need to re-build the wrapper so that any changes are replicated 
      in the Xalan wrappers.</p></a>
</faq>
  
<faq title="Problems with samples in Windows">
<q>I have encountered problem executing the &xslt4c; sample applications after rebuilding them under Win32 Environment (Windows NT 4.0, SP3).
   When I tried to execute the sample, I receive the error message 
   "Debug Assertion Failed! ...  Expression: _BLOCK_TYPE_IS_VALID(pHead->nBlockUse)".</q>
<a><p>You may be mixing debug and release versions of executables and libraries. In other words, if you are compiling the sample for debug, 
      then you should link with the debug version of the &xslt4c; and &xml4c; libraries and run with the debug version of the dynamic link 
      libraries.</p>
   <p>You must also make sure your application is linking with the Debug multithreaded DLL run-time library or the Multithreaded DLL 
      run-time library.  To check this setting do the following in Visual C++:</p>
   <ol>
     <li>Select Settings from the Project menu.<br/><br/></li>
     <li>Click the C/C++ tab.<br/><br/></li>
     <li>In the Category drop-down list, select Code Generation.<br/><br/></li>
     <li>In the Use run-time library drop-down list, select Multithreaded DLL for the Win32 Release configuration, or select Debug 
         Multithreaded DLL for the Win32 Debug configuration.</li>
   </ol>
   <p>Once you have changed this setting, you must rebuild your project.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Building on Windows">
<q>What do I need to rebuild &xslt4c; on Windows?</q>
<a><p>In order to build Xalan-C++ on Windows, you will need the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Xalan-C/C++ source distribution package.</li>
<li>The Xerces-C/C++ source distribution package or a compatible binary distribution package.</li>
<li>A compatible Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (2003, 2005, 2008, 2010) software development platform.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Xalan-C/C++ Version 1.11 (pre-release) is available from the Apache Subversion
   repository at <em>http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/xalan/c/trunk/.</em></p>
<p>After Xalan-C/C++ Version 1.11 is released, it can be downloaded from:
   <jump href="http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/xalan/xalan-c">Xalan Distributions</jump>.</p>
<p>The Xerces-C/C++ Version 3.1.1 is can be downloaded from:
   <jump href="http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/xerces/c/3">Xerces Distributions</jump>.</p>
<p>If you are building with the 
   <jump href="http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/icu/">IBM-ICU</jump>
   International Components for Unicode library, you will
   need to rebuild both the Xerces and Xalan libraries.</p>
<p>For more details, see <link idref="buildlibs" anchor="winbldenv">Steps for doing a Windows build</link>.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Building on UNIX">
<q>What do I need to rebuild &xslt4c; on UNIX?</q>
<a><p>To build &xslt4c; on supported UNIX platforms, you need &xml4c;, the GNU make utility, and a supported C++ compiler.  For more 
      details see: <link idref="buildlibs" anchor="unixbldenv">Steps for doing a UNIX build</link>.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Make errors on UNIX platforms">
<q>I get errors in the Makefile when running the make utility.  What's wrong?</q>
<a><p>You must use the GNU make utility.  Other make utilities may not work with the Xalan Makefile</p></a>
</faq>

<faq title="What is ICU">
<q>What is ICU and why do I need it?</q>
<a><p>The <jump href="http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization/icu/">IBM-ICU</jump>
      International Components for Unicode(ICU) is a C and C++ library that provides robust and 
      full-featured Unicode support on a wide variety of platforms. 
      &xslt4c; uses the ICU to extend support for encoding, number formatting, and sorting.</p> 
   <p>The ICU is available for download from <jump href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/index.html">
      http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/index.html</jump>.</p>
   <p>Xalan release 1.10 was tested with &icu-current;. The curent Xalan
      release 1.11 is not fully tested with IBM-ICU.</p>
   <p>For more details see: <link idref="usagepatterns" anchor="icu">Using the International Components for Unicode (ICU)</link>.</p>
   <!--icuNote-->
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="A tar checksum error on Solaris">
<q>I am getting a tar checksum error on Solaris. What's the problem?</q>
<a><p>The Solaris tar utility you are using does not properly handle files with long pathnames.  You must use GNU tar (gtar), which 
      handles arbitrarily long pathnames and is freely available on every platform on which &xslt4c; is supported.  If you don't already 
      have GNU tar installed on your system, you can obtain it from the Free Software Foundation
      <jump href="http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html">http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html</jump>.  For additional background 
      information on this problem, see the online manual<jump href="http://www.gnu.org/manual/tar/html_chapter/tar_8.html#SEC112">
      GNU tar and POSIX tar </jump> for the utility.</p>
</a>
</faq>
   
<faq title="&xslt4c; in Apache">
<q>Is it possible to run &xslt4c; from an Apache server?</q>

<a><p>A simple Apache module called <link idref="samples" anchor="apachemodulexslt">ApacheModuleXSLT</link> is provided as a sample. 
      It demonstrates how to integrate &xslt4c; with Apache.</p></a>
</faq>
    
<faq title="Is &xslt4c; thread-safe?">
<q>Is &xslt4c; thread-safe?</q>
<a><p>Instances of XalanTransformer are not thread-safe; each thread should use its own instance.</p>
   <p>In order to support very efficient use in multi-threaded applications, &xslt4c; is designed to avoid synchronization as much as
      possible. Each thread of execution is required to have its own set of "support" objects that contain the state of the
      transformation.  Accordingly, no synchronization is required when multiple threads are executing.</p>     
   <p>Parsed ("compiled") stylesheets (see <link idref="usagepatterns" anchor="compiled">Compiling stylesheets</link>) and parsed
      source documents may be freely shared by multiple threads of execution without worrying about providing synchronized access to 
      them. The <em>only</em> exception to this rule: You use XercesParserLiaison to parse a document after calling 
      XercesParserLiaison::setBuildBridgeNodes(false) or XercesParserLiaison::setThreadSafe(false). In this case, the document 
      <em>cannot</em> be shared by multiple threads of execution. For reasons of performance, we do not recommend the use of
      XercesParserLiaison, so this should not be an issue for most applications.</p>
   <p>All other objects in &xslt4c; are <em>not</em> thread-safe. Each thread must have its own instance of each object.</p>
   <p>See the <link idref="samples" anchor="threadsafe">ThreadSafe</link> sample program for more information.</p>
</a>
</faq>
   
<faq title="What can I do to speed up transformations?">
<q>What can I do to speed up transformations?</q>
<a><p>To maximize performance, here are some suggestions for you to keep in mind as you set up your applications:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>Use a compiled stylesheet when you expect to use the stylesheet more than once.<br/><br/></li>     
     <li>Set up your stylesheets to function efficiently.<br/><br/></li>
       <ul>
         <li>Don't use "//" (descendant axes) patterns near the root of a large document.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>Use xsl:key elements and the key() function as an efficient way to retrieve node sets.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>Where possible, use pattern matching rather than xsl:if or xsl:when statements.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>xsl:for-each is fast because it does not require pattern matching.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>Keep in mind that xsl:sort prevents incremental processing.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>When you create variables, &lt;xsl:variable name="fooElem" select="foo"/&gt; is usually faster than
         &lt;xsl:variable name="fooElem"&gt;&lt;xsl:value-of-select="foo"/&gt;&lt;/xsl:variable&gt;.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>Be careful using the last() function.<br/><br/></li>
         <li>The use of index predicates within match patterns can be expensive.<br/><br/></li>
       </ul>
   </ul>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Stylesheet validation">
<q>Can I validate an XSL stylesheet?</q>
<a><p>An XSL stylesheet is an XML document, so it can have a DOCTYPE and be subject to validation, but you probably will have
      to write a custom DTD for the purpose.</p>
   <p>The XSLT Recommendation includes a <jump href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#dtd">DTD Fragment 
      for XSL Stylesheets</jump> with some indications of what you need to do to create a complete DTD for a given
      stylesheet. Keep in mind that stylesheets can include literal result elements and produce output that is not valid
      XML.</p>
   <p>You can use the xsl:stylesheet doctype defined in xsl-html40s.dtd for stylesheets that generate HTML.</p>
</a>
</faq>
    
<faq title="What does the XalanDOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR mean?">
<q>What does the XalanDOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR mean?</q>
<a><p>It means that an attempt was made to add a node to a DOM that would create an invalid structure.  For example, text nodes 
      are not allowed as children of the document node.</p>
   <p>This is a common error when attempting to transform to DOM.  Source documents and stylesheets that might produce valid serialized XML
      might not produce value DOM.  The usual suspect is text nodes being generated before the document element is generated.</p>
   <p>If you think you have seen this error because of a bug in Xalan-C++'s source tree implementation, please post a bug report on Bugzilla, and attach a minimal source document 
      and stylesheet that produce the problem to the bug report.</p>
</a>
</faq>
    
<faq title="Submitting Patches">
<q>Who do I submit patches to?</q>
<a><p>Your contributions are much appreciated! You can e-mail your patches to 
      <human-resource-ref idref="xalandev"/> or raise an issue on the 
      <jump href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/XALANC">Jira issue tracking system</jump>.</p>
   <p>The Xalan projects use Jira as the issue tracking system.  Any significant bug or feature request is
      posted to this system.  You must subscribe to the system in order to submit patches and raise
      issues.</p>
<ul>
<li>Subscribe to Jira at: 
    <jump href="https://issues.apache.org/jira">https://issues.apache.org/jira</jump>
</li>
<li>Browse the issues at: 
    <jump href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/XALANC">https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/XALANC</jump>
</li>
</ul>
    <p>Issues posted to the project on Jira at XALANC are automatically posted to the
       <human-resource-ref idref="xalandev"/></p>
    <p>Our mailing lists are moderated.  You should subscribe to the mailing list in order to
      post a message, otherwise message delivery requires manual intervention or may be dropped.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Transformation Output Methods">
<q>How do I output a transformation to a DOM, a file, an in-memory buffer, or as input to another transformation?  Since the C++ 
   language can automatically construct an XSLTResultTarget from any of its constructor's argument types, you usually don't need 
   to create one explicitly.</q>
<a><p>The output parameter of XalanTransformer::transform() is an XSLTResultTarget which has many constructors.</p>
   <p>Output to a file:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>The easiest way is to use a null-terminated string containing the file name to create an XSLTResultTarget.  Or, use an 
         instance of std::ofstream.  The command line executables, and many of the sample applications use file names, so take a 
         look through the source code for more information.</li>
   </ul>
   <p>Output to an in-memory buffer:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>Use an instance of std::ostrstream or std::ostringstream to create an XSLTResultTarget.  See the StreamTransform sample 
         for more information.</li>
   </ul>
   <p>Input to another transformation:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>Any of the previous output targets could be used as the input to another transformation, but the FormatterToSourceTree 
         is probably the best for efficiency reasons.  See the source code for the TestXSLT command line program for more 
         information.</li>
   </ul>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Problems Using Sun's Forte/Workshop Compiler with code containing std::istrstream">
<q>Why won't XSLTInputSource work with std::istrstream on Sun Solaris using Forte/Sun Workshop compiler?</q>
<a><p>There is a bug in Sun's C++ standard library implementation; see 
      <jump href="http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14176">this bug</jump>. The short answer is that you need to 
      get a patch. The bug report includes the code for a simple program which you can use to see if your environment has the bug. 
      There is also a link to the patch.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Modifying an instance of XalanDocument">
<q>My transformation outputs to a XalanDocument (actually XalanSourceTreeDocument underneath) but W3C DOM functions like 
   DOMElement::setAttribute don't work! Am I going crazy or what?</q>
<a><p>No, you aren't going crazy. Xalan's default source tree is read-only for efficiency. If you need a DOM that supports 
      modifications, use the Xerces DOM instead.  See the TransformToXercesDOM sample for more information.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Changing Where Error Output is Sent">
<q>XalanTransformer outputs errors to the console. How do I, for example, output error to a file?</q>
<a><p>By default, XalanTransformer creates a XalanTransformerProblemListener (a subclass of ProblemListener) that writes 
      output to std::cerr. To change this you can:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>Redirect std::cerr from the command line.</li>
     <li>Call XalanTranformer::setWarningStream with a different std::ostream before calling XalanTransformer::transform.</li>
     <li>Instantiate your own XalanTransformerProblemListener with a different output stream and call 
         XalanTransformer::setProblemListener() before calling XalanTransformer::transform().</li>
     <li>Subclass some ProblemListener type and do custom handling of errors (you still then need to tell XalanTransformer 
         instances to use your ProblemListener.)</li>
   </ul>
   <p>In most case you probably want to do one of the first two.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Programmatic Error Information">
<q>How do I programmatically get the file name, line number, and column number for an error in an XML file?</q>
<a><p>Create a custom ErrorHandler (a &xml4c; class) and call XalanTransformer::setErrorHandler before parsing any sources.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="String Transcoding">
<q>How do I make a char* out of XalanDOMString (or vice-versa)?</q>
<a>
<p>See the static method XalanDOMString::transcode, or the functions TranscodeToLocalCodePage in the API documentation.  
   However, you should be very careful when transcoding Unicode characters to the local code page, because not all Unicode 
   characters can be represented.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Error Code/Exception Summary">
<q>Is there a table of error codes somewhere? How about a summary of what methods throw which exceptions?</q>
<a><p>There isn't, but we're working on it.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Extension Functions">
<q>The Xalan extension functions (xalan:node-set, etc.) don't work for me. Help!</q>
<a><p>Did you declare the namespace on the xsl:stylesheet or xsl:transform element? It should look like this: </p>
   <p>&lt;xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xalan="http://xml.apache.org/xalan"&gt; ...rest of stylesheet</p>
   <p>If you did and you still have problems, you might want to ask the mailing list.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Outputting results to a file on Windows 95/98">
<q>Why can't I ouput my results to a file on Windows 95/98?</q>
<a><p>Well, you can, but it doesn't always work. Neither Windows 95 or 98 are supported or tested. There have been reports of 
      problems on it, especially regarding Unicode support. See 
      <jump href="http://marc.info/?l=xalan-dev&amp;m=99840914524755&amp;w=2">this post</jump>.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Using format-number and ICU">
<q>Why does Xalan emit a warning when using the XSLT function format-number()?</q>
<a><p>Did you build with ICU support? See <link idref="usagepatterns" anchor="icu">Using the International Components for 
      Unicode (ICU)</link>.</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Perl wrapper for &xslt4c;?">
<q>Is there a Perl wrapper for &xslt4c;?</q>
<a><p>There is no Apache Perl wrapper, however Edwin Pratomo has written a wrapper for &xslt4c; version 1.4 that can be found 
      on CPAN</p>
</a>
</faq>

<faq title="Missing LocalMsgIndex.hpp file">
<q>Why can't I find the LocalMsgIndex.hpp file?</q>
<a><p>The LocalMsgIndex.hpp file is not shipped with the distributions because this file is generated during compile time.  This 
      file is created at the start of the build process and customized for the locale and message set you are using.</p>
   <p>On Windows, the LocalMsgIndex.hpp header is generated by the Localization project.  By building any project that has a 
      dependency on the Localization project, will trigger the Message Localization component to built and the LocalMsgIndex.hpp 
      to be generated.</p>
   <p>On Windows binary distributions, the LocalMsgIndex.hpp file is a member of the "<code>Include</code>" directory.</p>
   <p>On Unix binary distributions, the LocalMsgIndex.hpp file is a member of the "<code>include/xalanc/PlatformSupport</code>" directory.</p>
</a>
</faq>
	
</faqs>