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About XPath and West Street software

XPath is a special language for walking through a structure tree and finding very specific instances of elements, attributes, and other items (or nodes). Designed and managed by the W3 Consortium, XPath is a fundamental part of XSLT transformations and other languages/activities involving XML-style structured content.

Because a structured FrameMaker document mimics an XML-style structure, XPath is also perfect for searching a FrameMaker structure tree. It allows a high degree of flexibility during searches, from a basic element/attribute searches, to highly detailed combinations of element/attribute names, values, and relationships. Because the first step to real content reuse is finding the content, XPath is an essential part of nearly all West Street software.

XPath is not difficult, and West Street software makes it even easier with on-the-spot parsing and comprehensive error reporting. Our documentation always includes a wealth of examples to get you started. If you've never used XPath, don't let all the acronyms and buzzwords scare you... they are just names for powerful tools that can help you, and West Street software makes it simple to learn.

For examples of XPath and how we use it, download one of our ZIP files and check out the User Guide. If you still have questions and/or reservations, feel free to contact us.

 

Disclaimer: West Street Consulting is not affiliated with the W3C in any way, and intends to respect any trademarks and other intellectual property of the organization. In addition, although West Street has made every effort to ensure that its software uses XPath according to the official standard, it cannot absolutely guarantee it. While using our software, if you note that the XPath is not behaving to standard, please contact us.