[Geany-devel] XML/XSLT Tools Plugin Alpha release

[Chris Daley]

Hi all,

After a week or so of coding and trying to figure out the vagaries of
GTK, C and memory management, I finally have a very rough alpha of my
XML/XSLT Tools plugin ready to be reviewed by anybody who has the time
and the inclination.

Very briefly, I do a lot of XML/XSLT work and have yet to find any
decent FOS tools for Linux. I decided to roll my own, using Geany, my
favourite lightweight IDE. I learned C/C++ many years ago and haven't
used it since, so the quality of my code is likely to be poor and things
like memory management done badly. Despite that, I am giving it a go and
enjoying what comes out of it. 

The Plugin has the following features (and caveats)
* Project manager for XML/XSLT transformation chains (incomplete, cannot
load or save projects yet)
* Each file frame Has a tree view which allows the navigation of the XML
file and goes to the line of the doubleclicked row in the open file tab
like the existing symbols sidebar
* Allows xpaths to be applied to XML files
* Allows a XSLT stylesheet to be applied to an XML file 

How to use:
* Compile the plugin (see below)
* Add an xml file to the project space from the plugin's toolbar
* Open the tree view expander
* Enter an xpath (hit return at the end)
* Click the transform button on the plugin's toolbar
* A new document with the xpath results will be opened in Geany 
* Add an xslt file to the project space from the plugin's toolbar
* Click the transform button on the plugin's toolbar
* A new document with the results from applying the stylesheet will be
opened in Geany 

Obviously there is still a lot to be done, such as updating the tree
view with the xpath results, adding parameters to the XSL
transformations, automatically creating and adding results files and a
lot of simplifying the code and making sure there are no memory leaks.

I would appreciate any feedback anyone has at this stage, on the current
features as they work, the interface and the code.

See a screenshot here:
http://wikisend.com/download/444240/screenshot.png

Download the source code here:
http://wikisend.com/download/941734/xslteditor.c

To build:
gcc -c "xslteditor.c" -fPIC `pkg-config --cflags geany` -I
'/usr/include/libxml2/'

To make into a shared library:
gcc -Wall  "xslteditor.o" -o "xslteditor.so" -shared `pkg-config --libs
geany libxslt`

Many thanks for your time and happy coding!
Cheers
Chris Daley

-- 
--------------------------------------
Chris Daley

e: chebizarro at gmail.com
m: +61437977469
s: chebizarro

"When you hear hoof beats think first of horses, not centaurs." - Robert
T. Carroll