Whether or not there is a "problem" with MSXML 3.0 or not, let me summarize
what I wrote earlier to this list.

1. The XMetaL files created for the EAD Cookbook, located on the SAA EAD
Roundtable web site, were for XMetaL version 1.2. This version utilized
James Clark's XT software to do a page preview using an XSLT stylesheet.

2. With XMetaL 2.0, Softquad changed the default transformation software
to the MSXML processor. The ead.mcr file- this is the file that drives the
print preview function- that is found in the Cookbook directory will not
work with this configuration.

3. You have three choices.


a. You can change the default XSLT engine in XMetaL 2.0 to XT. This is
simple- I described how to do that in an earlier posting.

b. You can use the MSXML engine that XMetaL expects you to employ as the
default. The problem with this approach is that you will need to install
version 3.0 of the MSXML version on your computer. This is not (or wasn't
the last time I looked) the default version with IE 5.0 or 5.5, both of
which have version 2.0. You can download and install either version 3.0,
version 3.0 service pack 1, or a beta (preview) version of 4.0. But wait,
that's not enough. You must also download and "use the xmlinst.exe
installer tool to manually replace the older parser with the newer one."
This reconfigures the Windows registry to enable the newer version.

c. You can add a stylesheet instruction to the top your document that will
explicitly invoke a particular stylesheet for page preview as the writer
below describes. However, it is not quite as simple as merely adding the
stylesheet processing comment given in this message. Unless you have
updated MSXML as described in the previous option, you will be using version
2.0 of it, as found in your browser. This may or may not support all the
XSLT functions you use in your stylesheet. Also, you will have to include
a copy of the ead.dtd and eadbase.ent files, as well as the referenced
stylesheet, in a directory where you browser can find and parse them before
the transformation will work.

For all these reasons, I am sticking with using XT which is easy, fast and
stable.


4. I do not know what Softquad has done with version 2.1.



Michael

Michael J. Fox
Assistant Director for Library and Archives
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Blvd West
St. Paul, MN 55102-2409
651-296-2150 (phone)
651-296-9961 (fax)
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-----Original Message-----
From: Joo Hang Cha [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 1:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: XMetaL Configuration Problem: Page Preview


The only problem with MSXML 3.0 is that it requires to be installed in
"replace" mode in order to make it transform XML documents with the XSLT
namespace, rather than working only with the older XSL namespace.

The problem with the XMetaL Page Preview is associated with the macro. When
you click on Page Preview, the macro script attempts to create an ActiveX
object with progID called XT.Application.

XT.Application is the older parser that was used with XMetaL 1.2 and the
macro was designed for this parser.

Version 2.x of XMetaL uses MSXML parser, however. Therefore, XT.Application
parser is not installed, so the macro returns an error since the object does
not exist.

One way to get around this issue is to comment out the page preview macro
script with "//" so that it does not execute.

In order to transform the EAD documents with a stylesheet, add the following
processing instructions just below <?xml version="1.0"?> at the top of the
document:

<?xml-stylesheet href="stylesheet.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>

This tag will instruct IE5 and MSXML to transform the EAD document with the
specified XSLT stylesheet.