Any way to use XML+XSL as replacement for RTF?

[David Hawley]

I'd like more flexible reporting than available through RTF. For example, more intelligent output of connections, sorted by type and reordered based on direction, etc.
Given a suitable XML representation, I think I can format it using XSL + some host.  Has anyone tried this approach?

Thanks.

[johann]

Yes, that's definitely a way to go.

We tried to generate documentation via RTF templates but soon realized that the results did not satisfy our needs.

So we decided to export the model in XMI format and transform that XML to documentation in XHMTL (further converted to PDF) with the use of XSLT.

But there are some drawbacks:

• it is not easy to embed RTF linked documents in XHTML documents
• we have to embed diagrams as bitmap images, because the Microsoft graphics format (EMF) is not convertible to any vector graphic standard (e.g. SVG)
• a lot of information was extracted from the <xmi:Extension> sub-tree of the XMI. But this branch is neither standardized nor documented anywhere.
• You always have to export the XMI prior to document generation - that takes some time..

[David Hawley]

Thanks for the excellent caveats, especially on the undocumented XMI:Extension element.  I'm now considering doing a custom export.

[qwerty]

It's also possible to export only the relevant parts via automation in XML format. That's way faster than the standard XMI export.

q.