This is the permanent status page for Calabash. Calabash is an implementation of XProc: An XML Pipeline Processor, a specification being developed by the W3C to address questions about the XML processing model. Version 0.9.17 beta is now available.
Calabash runs XProc pipelines. It is a command-line application. This version of Calabash is supposed to implement the 5 January 2010 Working Draft version of the XProc specification.
The current release is 0.9.17 from 27 February 2010. This is a beta release.
Version 0.9.17 implements the versioning and other recent changes to XProc. It depends on Saxon 9.2. It also introduces an error listener to aid integration of XML Calabash into other products.
There have been a lot of changes since the last release, so it's possible that this version may be a little unstable. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.
This version of Calabash passes all the tests in the test suite. I assert that it passes “Test validxsd-006”, the test suite scaffolding just isn't smart enough to notice.
Recent changes:
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Attempted to fix issue #64: deal with character sets correctly.
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Updated <p:http-request> to support multipart requests.
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Reworked error handling so that all messages go through an ErrorListener. (This will make it easier to integrate XML Calabash into other tools.)
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Reworked the logging code to go through the ErrorListener.
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Added error-listener configuration property.
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Fixed bug where failure to construct the XProcRuntime object caused an NPE when attempting to report the error.
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Fixed issue #84: resolve-uri with a single argument should use the static base URI.
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Fixed issue #83: make -S less paranoid.
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Updated ValidateWithXSD to clear the schema cache if it's possible. You are strongly encouraged to use Saxon 9.2.0.4 or later.
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Added xmlunit.Compare step provided by Charles Foster.
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Check for XSLT version correctly; force the XsltCompiler to perform a schema-aware compile if we're a schema-aware processor.
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Fixed bugs in value-available; wasn't handling distinction between no declaration and no value correctly.
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Support output-base-uri in <p:xslt>; handle the case where the primary result document is null.
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Print a warning message if we ask for a schema aware processor but don't get one.
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Implemented use-when.
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Attempt to support XPointer framework links.
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Fixed bug in <p:label-elements> where attributes weren't properly recognized.
Calabash's performance against the test suite is reported. (Most releases so far have passed most, if not quite all, of the tests.)
Calabash is implemented in Java and should run on any platform that supports Java 1.5 or later and has a command-line. You can get “calabash” from the download page on xmlcalabash.com. It is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2.0.
Previous releases:
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There was no official 0.9.16 release.
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0.9.15 from 04 October 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.14 from 23 July 2009 was a beta release.
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Version 0.9.13 was never actually released.
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0.9.12 from 23 June 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.11 from 22 June 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.10 from 01 June 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.9 from 30 April 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.8 from 21 April 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.7 from 31 March 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.6 from 11 March 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.5 from 05 March 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.4 from 04 February 2009 was a beta release.
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0.9.3 from 19 December 2008 was a beta release.
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0.9.2 from 04 December 2008 was a beta release.
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0.9.1 from 30 November 2008 was a beta release.
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0.9.0 from 28 November 2008 was a beta release.
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0.8.8 from 20 November 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.8.6 from 09 November 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.8.5 from 04 November 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.8.4 from 31 October 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.8.3 from 26 October 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.8.2 from 20 October 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.6.3 from 28 September 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.6.2 from 26 September 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.6.1 from 22 September 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.6.0, from 27 August 2008 was an alpha release.
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0.5.1, from 24 August 2008 was the initial alpha release.
Calabash is maintained by Norman Walsh. Please report any bugs that you encounter.
If you'd like to build the project yourself, you can browse the the Subersion repository or access it directly from http://svn.xmlcalabash.com/.
Calabash was first announced on 24 August 2008. It is a complete rewrite of an earlier project named simply The XML Pipeline Processor.
Comments:
There doesn't seem to be any source code at http://svn.xmlcalabash.com/
It was there, you just couldn't see it :-) I've fixed that now.
Thanks for your work on this.
I'm going to play with it a bit this week.
The fact that you keep on adding dependancies on foreign proprietary software shows how XML has failed. Obviously step #1 of xproc support work should be to have open-source implementations of all the XML Standards needed for xproc itself available. I like the idea of xproc; I hate the idea of having to throw out hundreds, if not in sum thousands of dollars for licenses just to run the full xproc vocabulary. E.g. I have the perfect usage scenario for xproc. validate query validate transform split upload etc. Seems to start off with xproc seriously, I first gotta implement the pack of xml standards. Wake up W3C! Where are YOUR prototypes?!
Martin,
The only standard steps in Calabash that require any proprietary software are p:validate-with-xml-schema and p:xsl-formatter.
In each case, it's simply a matter of expediency on my part. I will certainly support Xerces for schema validation eventually, and probably FOP for XSL formatting.
All of the other dependencies are on open source packages of one flavor or another.
Norman,
...you mean "so long as you don't try to use the two year old XPath2 / XSLT2 standards" which again forces you to have DTDs available which again .. or you go down the money route. That's what I'm talking about. Anyways, I'd like to seriously test this but with saxon as a requirement I'll probably have to hack some first. Let's see what my employer says..
Martin,
There's nothing commercial about the Saxon support except for the p:validate-with-xml-schema step, which I've already explained is a question of implementation convenience, not any sort of refusal to implement an entirely free suite of steps.
Regarding XPath2 / XSLT2: do either of these requires DTDs or any other form of validation? I thought you just don't get a lot of the schema-aware goodness if you don't have validation. There are, however, lots of other reasons why these versions are a big step forward from the old ones.
By the way, is there an open-source schema-aware XSLT2 processor available? I'm fully aware of the Saxon-B/SA split.
Ed,
You don't need DTDs or XML Schemas to use XPath 2.0 or XSLT 2.0. You can use DTDs, of course, and you can use XML Schema if you have a schema-aware processor. I'm not aware of any open-source, schema-aware XSLT 2.0 processors.
Personally, I stick with RELAX NG validation and don't care about schema-awareness at the XSLT level (beyond simple types that are available in a basic processor).
I appreciate the nature of this Calabash project and the W3C work. It is on a valuable track.
We've been working on a much narrower development project on a homebrew basis, but it does reflect the qualities of creating a modularized pipeline of XSLT transforms. It uses an ASP script controlling things together with MSXML objects and methods (on a Windows server obviously). It's oriented to simply grabbing static XML/HTML inputs, running a specified series of transforms, then displaying the result in a browser as XHTML, forms, slightly animated at that point by embedded Javascript (nothing fancy at all, no frills).
Our framework simply leverages naming the inputs and XSLTs on the URL http call, e.g. http://xtp.boeing.com/xtp.asp?xml=http://server/folder/foo.xml&xsl=GetHTML,Transform1,Transform2,ShowTable
Thank you Norman!
What about auto-discovery of
configuration.xml-like files on the classpath, akin to JAR service lookup?This would mean that extension steps can be supported by Calabash just by dropping a JAR with the implementation and extra configuration file onto Calabash's classpath.
Such extra configuration files should probably be able to override the built-in
<implementation>declarations, in order to, for instance, implement<p:xsl-formatter>with FOP.Can you tell me how to use p:xsl-formatter step. I am getting some errors when I use this step.
I am running calabash with the following options. -isource=out1.fo xpl\test-pdf.xpl
xep is added in the classpath.
Below is the error message:
Error : file:/C:/Sesi/personal/xml/xproc/calabash-0.9.14/calabash-0.9.14/xpl/test-pdf.xpl:2: Output port 'result' on anonymous step declare-step at file:/C:/Sesi/personal/xml/xproc/calabash-0.9.14/ca labash-0.9.14/xpl/test-pdf.xpl:2 unbound Error : Pipeline failed: err:XE0001: Output port 'result' on anonymous step declare-step at file:/C :/Sesi/personal/xml/xproc/calabash-0.9.14/calabash-0.9.14/xpl/test-pdf.xpl:2 unbound Unknown error