From iXML to XSpec

Sheila Thomson

Abstract

In the autumn of 2024, I attended the XML Summer School and persuaded (it wasn’t difficult) Stephen Pemberton to tack a session on iXML onto the end of his course on XForms. On the bus home, I made a start on my first iXML grammar. Within a week I had encountered a character encoding mystery and whitespace challenges, lost a day naming things and was working on repurposing XSpec for testing iXML grammars.

This paper: outlines my learning journey, as a case study; highlights existing methods for tesing iXML; and summarises how I adapted XSpec for testing iXML.


Table of Contents

Introduction
What is iXML?
Why iXML?
Learning iXML
Testing an iXML grammar
Eyeballing the output
Schema validation
Diff
XSpec
Using XSpec to test XSLT
Using XSpec to test iXML
What testing revealed
Automation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Invisible XML Grammar for a DOCTYPE declaration
Chronological List of Past Papers on Invisible XML