XSBrowser 2.00

XSBrowser is a project which creates a human-readable documentation of XML document types.
The xsbrowser creates a human-readable documentation of XML document types represented as XML 1.0 DTDs or XML schemas (REC-xmlschema-20010502).
The user neednt understand the DTD or XML Schema syntax. The xsbrowser exploits XML Schema. Although you can directly feed a DTD into the xsbrowser, it is recommended to first translate the DTD using the dtd2xs translator.
The dtd2xs translator allows a more sophisticated mapping of DTDs onto XML schemas. The only requirement is a Web browser that supports Java applets, Javascript, and CSS1.
The Web browser neednt support XML.
As a main feature, the XSBrowser exploits human readable material contained in DTD comments and XML Schema documentation and presents it to the user who is interested in the meaning of XML documents. Only human readable material converts syntactical markup into meaningful (semantic) markup.
XSBrowser allows navigating an XML document model and creating valid XML instance documents using an HTML browser. Enumerated values are listed in a select box, i.e. completely structured and coded XML documents can be created by pure means of a
The user can navigate the XML node tree. The XPath expression in the middle frame identifies the selected XML node. Anonymous repeating groups (repeating choice, repeating sequence) are represented by the location steps _choice and _sequence. The user can navigate up to any ancestor of the selected node by clicking onto the corresponding XPath location step.
The lower left frame links to the child nodes of the selected XML node (down navigation). If the down navigation is unambigious the xsbrowser automatically navigates down until it needs a user decision (choice, selection of an instance).
Version restrictions:
- The xsbrowser supports all basic XML Schema concepts. Some advanced XML Schema concepts (REC-xmlschema-0-20010502) are not yet implemented. Other limitations derive from the fact that Java applets (see architecture) have only limited access to Internet resources (applet security). It is possible to overcome these limitations with a Web server and an applet-servlet-communication. A future version of the xsbrowser will address these limitations.