| White paper |
| Documentation |
| Download |
| License (GPL) |
| Samples |
Motivation
Structured document transformations will take a very important place in many activities including formatting documents to various formats (HTML, PDF, Open EBook...) and adapting them for various devices (printers, phones, E-Book readers, personal digital assistants...). This requires an environment able to take in charge the whole transformation process.
Transmorpher is partly based on the transformation language XSLT
recommended by the "World-wide web consortium" (W3C).
XSLT is overly complex for simple transformations (such as renaming tags)
and too simple for composing transformations (such as applying a
transformation until it does not apply anymore). It enables the
description of individual transformations but does not support
transformation combination and complex data flows.
Transformer takes as input a complex transformation described in XML. It
is portable, open to other transformation engines and yet sufficient for
expressing complex systems of transformations.
Transmorpher is based on XSLT to which it adds the opportunity to combine transformations. More precisely it allows to route XML streams through transformation processes running in parallel, sequence, iteration. These processes can have several input and output streams that can be dispatched and merged through special connectors. Moreover, it enhance XSLT with simple transformation templates (suppression, renaming), regular expression substitutions and query facilities. Of course, these combinations are also processes that can, in turn, be combined.
Technical data
Transmorpher is a first Java implementation of these concepts, taking advantage of existing XML parsers and XSLT processors. It shall also be made available as a Servlet.
The developments are based on standard and up-to-date techniques (Java Servlet, threads, XML, SAX2, XSLT). The currently used subtools are:
| Java | 1.2 |
| XML parser | Xerces |
| XSLT processor | Xalan 2.0 |
| Servlet server | ApacheJServ 1.1.2 |
Partners
Transmorpher is a joint development of the Exmo action of INRIA Rhône-Alpes and FluxMédia.