I presented my ideas on processing XML using XML at Balisage, earlier this year. While there I actually demo’d converting my Process XML draft to a FreeMind-based user interface at the MarkLogic-sponsored demo jam. Well, it wasn’t as much a user interface as it was a representation of the XML that might be used to create a user interface with, but it was a start and today I’ve finally taken it a few steps further.

Um, that’s not exactly true either. I’ve worked on my Process XML some more during the last few weeks, because I’m using it for a customer project. What started out as a DTD is now a RelaxNG compact schema that uses xml:base to ease processing, covers most of the current Calabash version (1.0.3-94, as I write this), and is actually useful.

But today I wrote “live” Process XML, XSLT and pipelines that will make it a reality. The GUI will not happen for some time yet, because there is no need for one in the current implementation, but it’s going to be used for describing various XML-related processes that include XProc pipelines on an ​eXist​ server handling on-demand publishing.

And it’s very cool.