DeAI Research
Source · Balisage series on markup technologies

XML in an AsciiDoc World: SaxonJS to the Rescue

2022Evan Lenz

cid 4649f29de2b994a5e2d385336fc8ecb32366a581860a9d41295cdef438808d0c · original · via openalex

Title: XML in an AsciiDoc World: SaxonJS to the Rescue
Authors: Evan Lenz
Venue: Balisage series on markup technologies
Year: 2022
Canonical: doi:10.4242/balisagevol27.lenz01
URL: https://doi.org/10.4242/balisagevol27.lenz01
Collector: openalex
OA: false

ABSTRACT
Static website generation has long been an effective use case for XML and XSLT. Today, static site generators remain popular, but they rarely use XML. Antora is a static site generator for software documentation. It runs on Node.js and uses AsciiDoc for its source content. It has desirable features including git integration, site versioning, and pluggable modern UI bundles. However, Antora doesn't natively handle complex content generation needs. Now, thanks to SaxonJS and Antora's new extension mechanism, we can weave in the power of XML and XSLT. The docca project generates reference documentation for Boost C++ libraries via an Antora extension that invokes SaxonJS, seamlessly integrating auto-generated and manually-authored content into the result. This presentation introduces key project components (Doxygen, Antora, AsciiDoc, and SaxonJS running on Node.js) and includes sample code, a demo, and a brief discussion of other ways XML and SaxonJS might complement AsciiDoc and Antora.