This document summarizes the XTiger XML specification and its implementation in the AXEL library. Some of the links open the AXEL demonstration editor with a self-demonstrating template of the feature described. Open them and test the corresponding editor, then click on the Dump button of the editor to see the generated XML output document; with Firefox (recommended) click on the Source button to see the template source. Some other links open either the specification itself or some extra documentation.
"xt" namespace prefix associated with the "http://ns.inria.org/xtiger" namespace.Limitation: you MUST call the XTiger prefix "xt"
Example:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xt="http://ns.inria.org/xtiger">
xt:head section inside the HTML head section. At least you must declare the name of the XML root element of the XML output document in a label attribute (spec).Example:
<xt:head label="Document"/>
You can insert a primitive editor that generates some content in the XML output document with an “xt:use” element. The types attribute must contain the plugin name. The content of the xt:use element initializes the default content of the primitive editor. You can also declare a label attribute, it will open a new XML tag in the XML output document where the primitive editor will serialize its content (spec).
Example:
<xt:use types="text" label="Name">Click to edit your name</xt:use>
To insert a primitive editor to generate an XML attribute you must use the “xt:attribute” element with a types attribute set to the plugin name and a name attribute set to the attribute name (spec).
Example:
<xt:attribute types="text" name="Nickname">Click to edit your nickname</xt:use>
Limitation: when using the xt:attribute element with a plugin like the "select" plugin that defines a finite choice between different values defined by a values attribute, the default value MUST be declared inside a default attribute of the xt:attribute (and not in the xt:attribute content as with the xt:use element).
Example:
<xt:attribute types="select" name="Color" values="red green blue" default="red"/>
Some plugins are not compatible with the xt:attribute element when their XML output content model is not a scalar value. This is the case for the “link” plugin for instance that generates two sibling XML elements that cannot be stored inside an XML attribute.
Each plugin defines its own parameters that you can set in the param attribute of the xt:use or xt:attribute element. See the demonstration template for each plugin in the “plugins” folder of the templates for a description of each parameter.
Note: AXEL-FORMS extends AXEL with two form-oriented plugins: “input”, “choice”.
filter parameter of the param attribute. AXEL comes wit a set of pre-defined filters: “date”, “wiki”, “style”, “optional”, “image”, “video” (the last 2 are unsupported and for illustrative purpose)You can set several filters as a whitespace separated list. Some filters are exclusive of each other. Each filter adds its own parameters that you can declare inside the param attribute. Usually their name starts with the filter unique identifier followed by underscore. See the demonstration template for each filer in the “filters” folder of the templates for a description of each parameter.
Example:
<xt:use types="text" param="filter=date">0/1/01/2012</xt:use>
Limitation: the “date” filter currently defines the user’s language as French to display date, the self-describing template explains how to add other regions.
xt:component elements identified by a unique name attribute in the xt:head section of the template. Then you can insert those components at any position inside the document, or inside another component, with an xt:use element with a types attribute set to the name of the xt:component element (spec).Example:
<xt:component name="a_contact">
<xt:use types="text" label="Name">Name</xt:use> (<xt:use types="text" label="Phone">phone number</xt:use>)
</xt:component>
...
<xt:use types="a_contact" label="Person"/>
You can set the label attribute on the xt:use element to open a new XML tag in the XML output document where the output of the component will be inserted. This is the classical way to create hierarchical data structures : each time you set a label attribute on an xt:use element you generate one level deeper in the output hierarchy.
types attribute of the xt:use element used to insert the components. The alternatives will be presented to the end user with a popup menu to select between the different components.Example:
<xt:use types="a_parag a_list an_illustration"/>
The choice will open a new tag named after the selected component name into the XML output document. You can rewrite the tag name if you do not want it to match the component name by using a label attribute. In that case the label attribute must contain the tag names to be used for each component name.
Example:
<xt:use types="a_parag a_list an_illustration" label="para list fig"/>
Limitation: you can not create alternatives between primitive editors since you can only instantiate one primitive editor at a time in an xt:use or an xt:attribute element. Consequently you cannot neither create mixed alternatives between XML structures and primitive editors. To create a choice between several primitive editors, you MUST wrap them into different components.
label attribute to open a new XML tag in the XML output document, or you must indicate in a pseudoLabel attribute the possible elements or attributes that will start a new fragment (spec).The pseudoLabel attribute is a hint for the XML loading algorithm. It contains a whitespace separated list of tokens. Each token that starts with "@" identifies an attribute name, the other one identify an element name. When loading XML data into the document each matching will produce a new fragment repetition. A matching element is either an element with a name found in the pseudo-label list, or an element carrying an attribute found in the pseudo-label list.
You can limit the number of repetitions with the minOccurs and maxOccurs attribute of the xt:repeat element.
Example:
<xt:repeat minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="*" pseudoLabel="parag list illustration">
<xt:use types="parag list illustration"/>
</xt:repeat>
Limitation: currently maxOccurs only supports the values 1 and *, any other value is converted to * (unbounded repetition)
xt:menu-marker element. The first xt:menu-marker element found inside an xt:repeat element will be replaced by the repetition menu (spec).Example:
<xt:repeat minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="*" label="Contacts">
<fieldset>
<legend>Contact <xt:menu-marker/></legend>
<p><xt:use types="text" label="Name">Click to enter a name</xt:use></p>
</fieldset>
</xt:repeat>
Example:
.axel-core-editable:hover {
outline: solid 1px blue;
}