What Is an SPS?
A StyleVision Power Stylesheet (or SPS) is an extended XSLT stylesheet which is used:
•to control the display and entry of data in the Authentic View (a graphical XML-document-editor available in the Altova products XMLSpy, Authentic Desktop, Authentic Browser, and StyleVision) of XML documents and databases (DBs); and
•to specify the output design of an XML document transformation.
An SPS is saved with the file extension .sps.
Design of the SPS
An SPS is created graphically in StyleVision. It is based on a schema (DTD or XML Schema); if the SPS is to be used with a DB, it is based on an XML Schema generated automatically by StyleVision from the DB structure. The design of the SPS is flexible. It can contain dynamic and static content. The dynamic content is the data in one or more XML documents or DBs. The static content is content entered directly in the SPS. Dynamic content can be included in the design either as straight text or within components such as input fields, combo boxes, and tables. Additionally, dynamic content can be manipulated (using Auto-Calculations) and can be displayed if certain conditions in the source document are fulfilled. Different pieces of content can be placed at various and multiple locations in the SPS. Also, the SPS can contain various other components, such as images, hyperlinks, and JavaScript functions. Each component of the SPS can then be formatted for presentation as required.
The SPS and Authentic View
When a finished SPS is associated with an XML document or DB, that XML document or DB can be edited in Authentic View (a graphical XML-document-editor available in the Altova products XMLSpy, Authentic Desktop, Authentic Browser, and StyleVision). Authentic View is an ideal solution for enabling the distributed and graphical editing of an XML document or DB. Multiple users can edit an XML document or DB in the graphical user interface presented by Authentic View. In StyleVision, as you design an SPS, you can preview and test the SPS (in the Authentic View tab for that SPS). For a detailed description of how SPSs work with Authentic View, see SPS and Authentic View.
The SPS and XSLT stylesheets
After you have completed designing the SPS, you can generate XSLT stylesheets based on the design you have created. StyleVision supports XSLT 1.0, XSLT 2.0 and XSLT 3.0, and from a single SPS, you can generate XSLT stylesheets for HTML, RTF, XSL-FO, Text, and Word 2007-and-higher output (XSL-FO, Text, and Word 2007-and-higher in Enterprise edition only; RTF and Text in Enterprise and Professional Editions; in Basic Edition only HTML output is supported). The generated XSLT stylesheets can be used in external transformations to transform XML documents based on the same schema as the SPS from which the XSLT stylesheet was generated. For more information about procedures used with XSLT stylesheets, see the section Generated Files.
The SPS and output
You can also use StyleVision to directly generate output (HTML, RTF, Text, XSL-FO, and PDF in Enterprise Edition; HTML and RTF in Professional Edition; and HTML in Basic Edition). The tabs for Output Views display the output for the active SPS document directly in the StyleVision GUI. The required output can also be generated to file from within the GUI via the File | Save Generated Files command or via StyleVision Server.