The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 5 (of 5)

XML Spy Home Edition free

Since this tools has been mentioned a few times on this site as a staple in the programmers toolbox, I thought you might like to know there is now a free edition of it http://www.xmlspy.com/support_freexmlspyhome.asp

[ via http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=daae362d-5fd2-4330-af1f-b59f7d314500 ]

Just me (Sir to you)
Monday, June 7, 2004

I'm using oxygen (http://www.oxygenxml.com) and it rocks. I don't think they have a free edition, but the professional one is MUCH cheaper than XMLSpy...

Nicky
Monday, June 7, 2004

Also, make sure to read the licensing agreement of XML Spy very closely. I promptly uninstalled when I got to the paragraph where they reserve the right to have XML Spy send usage data from my computer at their whim to prevent piracy!

Chris Nahr
Monday, June 7, 2004

Chris - exactly what a firewall is for...?

Andrew Cherry
Monday, June 7, 2004

Ach... we use Oxygen at work and I don't like it.

It crashes often; it can't cope with files on a network share unless you have a drive mapped; it hangs on some large documents; sometimes it doesn't start up; associating it with files is hit-and-miss; its UI has all the problems you'd expect with a Java app (wrong fonts, wrong colours, some non-standard text interaction stuff). I'm rambling.

Spend the extra money if you can. Especially if you can get a tool that lets you debug XSL transforms (Oxygen will often just crash and not let you know where or why).

Could just be my setup, though. Lots of people seem happy with it. :)

Thom Lawrence
Monday, June 7, 2004

The one feature I really want is the xpath evaulator, it's not in the free version.

So I use this : http://www.xmlcooktop.com/

Damian
Monday, June 7, 2004

CookTop looks nice enough but apparently it can't handle schemas that are imported into the document's default namespace. The fact that it's virtually undocumented doesn't help. Any ideas?

Chris Nahr
Wednesday, June 9, 2004