gnomon 1.0 released

[Mark Weaver <ma...@npsl.co.uk>]

Hello,

I'm pleased to announce the first public release of gnomon, which is
offered under an open source license basically identical to that of
Apache.  Gnomon is an ISAPI extension that provides server side XSLT
support to IIS.  Gnomon is (of course!) based on Xalan-C.  You can
download binaries (with a hopefully decent installer), see samples, and
read documentation at http://gnomon.npsl.co.uk.  Source is available via
anonymous CVS.

Gnomon does a lot more than just adding XSLT processing capabilities:

- Provides extension functions that allow access to HTTP GET/POST data,
cookies and CGI variables, through XSLT extension functions.

- Allows running SQL database queries and reading/writing database
persisted session state, again through XSLT extension functions.

- Allows dynamic generation of the XML source through ASP, PHP, ASP.NET,
ActivePerl, etc.

- Includes support for templates - a way of constructing a single web page
out of multiple reusable blocks. Each block is a separate page on the
server and Gnomon transparently modifies and directs GET and POST data to
the correct page, outputting a single page back to the client browser.

- Allows configuration, including application of default stylesheets,
through a flexible and hierarchical XML based configuration file system

- Supports Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 (IIS6 in
native, rather than IIS5.0 isolation, mode).

- Allows easily adding extra extension functions to XSLT through a system
of "gnomon extensions" which are DLLs that hook into the transformation
process -- allowing for installation of Xalan extension functions, amongst
other things.

We (NPSL) have been using gnomon in one form or another for over 2 years,
and are pretty happy with it -- we hope you will be too!

Thanks,

Mark

P.S. Any experiences and bug reports gratefully received.