Java Tools
There is a whole class of Java-based applets and applications which now should be reconsidered. With Sun releasing the primary Java components under the GPL, the additional issue of compatibility with FOSS Java implementations like GCJ is greatly reduced or eliminated.
It is important to make sure that the complete Java package and its dependencies are unencumbered, that is, there are no non-free licenses that restrict the use of the software.
What follows is a small selection of potential FOSS tools implemented in Java:
Apache FOP
"Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) is the world's first print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and the world's first output independent formatter. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported include PDF, PCL, PS, SVG, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT, MIF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF."
Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) and JIMI , two components needed in order for FOP to work, were non-free. Their current status needs to be determined in light of the Sun GPL announcement. See About PDF Conversion for further details. See the discussion concerning the substitution of Batik as an alternate image processor at http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics/GnuClasspathCompatibility.
Batik
"Batik is a Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for various purposes, such as display, generation or manipulation.
The project’s ambition is to give developers a set of core modules that can be used together or individually to support specific SVG solutions. Examples of modules are the SVG Parser, the SVG Generator and the SVG DOM. Another ambition for the Batik project is to make it highly extensible — for example, Batik allows the developer to handle custom SVG elements. Even though the goal of the project is to provide a set of core modules, one of the deliverables is a full fledged SVG browser implementation which validates the various modules and their inter-operability."
Xalan-Java
"Xalan-Java is an XSLT processor for transforming XML documents into HTML, text, or other XML document types. It implements XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0 and XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 and can be used from the command line, in an applet or a servlet, or as a module in other program."
Xerces Parser
"Apache Xerces Parser is a collaborative software development project dedicated to providing robust, full-featured, commercial-quality, and freely available XML parsers and closely related technologies on a wide variety of platforms supporting several languages."
Eclipse
Eclipse "is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle."
Use the Eclipse Modeling framework (EMF) plugin in Eclipse to create Java Emitter Template (JET) files. These JET files are text files with file names that end with "jet". ".xmljet" templates generate XML.
See the tutorial, "Generating an EMF Model using XML Schema (XSD)" for an overview of this approach.
Javadoc
"Javadoc is a tool for generating API documentation in HTML format from doc comments in source code. It can be downloaded only as part of the Java 2 SDK."
...
"The standard doclet generates HTML and is built into the Javadoc tool. Other doclets that Java Software has developed are listed here.
- Doclet API is an API provided by the Javadoc tool for use by doclets. See Doclet Overview for a basic description and simple examples. (These documents are for version 1.3 of Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition.)
- Taglet API is an interface provided for custom formatting the text of Javadoc tags. Taglet Overview for a basic description and simple examples. (These documents are for version 1.5 of Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition.)
- MIF Doclet - Want beautiful PDF? This doclet can automate the generation of API documentation in PDF by way of MIF. It also enables you to print directly to a printer. MIF is Adobe Frame
Maker's interchange format. - Doc
Check Doclet checks doc comments in source files and generates a report listing the errors and irregularities it finds. It is part of the Sun Doc Check Utilities. - Exclude Doclet is a simple wrapper program that enables you to exclude from the generated documentation any public or protected classes (or packages) that you specify. It takes a list of classes in a file and removes them from the Root
Doc before delegating execution to the standard doclet."
jEdit
"Some of jEdit's features include:
- Written in Java, so it runs on Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows.
- Built-in macro language; extensible plugin architecture. Dozens of macros and plugins available.
- Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the "plugin manager" feature.
- Auto indent, and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages.
- Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode.
- Folding for selectively hiding regions of text.
- Word wrap.
- Highly configurable and customizable."
The jEdit XML plugin "provides a tree structure browser for editing XML, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, and completion for XML, HTML and CSS. Matching tag actions, pretty-printing, graphical editing of tag attributes and conversion of special characters to entities and vice versa is supported for both XML and HTML files. XML files are validated against their DTD or XSD, and the element tree is shown in a dockable window. Validation errors are shown in the Error List."
Vex
Vex , a Visual Editor for Xml, "hides the raw XML tags from the user, providing instead a wordprocessor-like interface. Because of this, Vex is best suited for "document-style" XML documents such as XHTML and DocBook rather than "data-style" XML documents."
Vex is primarily for use as an Eclipse plugin, but can also be used as a separate module.
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