I started Rexsel after I had written a compact "pretty printer" display of XSLT for the on-line documention of my stylesheets. It occured to me that it would be possible to reverse the process and write XSLT stylesheets in this compact version. It would also allow some analysis of the code independent of a XSLT compiler. This would be very handy for those people who did not have access to tools, such as the oXygen IDE, which provide analysis of the XSLT. In the end the Rexsel syntax was somewhat different to my displayed version, but I think the result is better. It is similar to the relationship between Relax-NG and its compact form.
Rexsel, CRexsel and the editor was written and is maintained by me, Hugh Field-Richards. I retired back in 2005 from a career as a computer scientist; I am now a professional music engraver and publisher (Hop Vine Music). I also played the bassoon extensively in the Malvern (Worcestershire, UK) area where I have lived for over 40 years. Unfortunately a recent horse riding accident has curtailed my playing somewhat (and my riding); but has allowed time to concentrate on some technical work and publishing. I started Rexsel to help in the development of all my projects which use XSLT, including the Hop Vine Music site, and the Paloose web server (as well as this site).
As far as I am aware only those maintained by me:
- This site (obviously)
- Hop Vine Music which is my music publishing site.
- Paloose which is a Web engine for XML based sites that I developed over 15 years ago.
- There are other private sites for family and a CMS based on Paloose for which I use Rexsel.
Although the current state of Rexsel language and compiler is reasonably mature, there are several areas which could benefit from further work.
- Add support for later versions of XSLT, currently only XSLT1.0 and XSLT1.1 are supported. There should be no problem extending support to later versions other than my time.
- Analysing XPath expressions. This is a fairly advanced process and may never be implemented.
- Checking if parameters in a proc declaration exist when the call is made.
I have always used the oXygen XML editor and IDE for developing XML projects that envolve XSLT and RELAX-NG. I used it as part of my work before I retired and started Paloose. I had been involved with SGML and XML for many years and oXygen had always been the editor I turned to. Since I retired the good folks at oXygen have supported my various open source projects by supplying me with a suitable licence, for which many thanks. Whenever I have XML/XSL to develop their editor is the one I turn to. Having it syntax aware of PHP, CSS and other languages is a real bonus.
For those who are interested the Rexsel site was built on a system called Paloose, which is a subset of the Cocoon system, but written in PHP5 rather than Java.