Summary

(Below) Package Viewer in SketchPath

The method of compressing a file structure comprising a number of related XML files in a directory structure into a single package is used in a number of XML standards

SketchPath provides a facility to view the compressed directory structure of a package and open directly any XML file contained within. The group of XPath expressions currently in scope in SketchPath is automatically run against each file as it is opened in the package, this can be used to show certain properties for each file.

SketchPath includes support for:

Opening a Package

To open a package, click the 'Open Package' button on the main toolbar or select 'Project' | 'Open Package' from the main menu. The package directory structure is then shown in the Package Pane.

Select a file from the directory tree by selecting the required filename and presssing <enter> or double-clicking.

The XML can be edited, viewed and queried with XPath or Regex as any other XML file. To switch from the package view to the raw XML Editor, select the XML Editor tabbed page.

A set of pre-defined XPath expressions can be run automatically against each XML file opened in the package, and the results shown in real time. The XPath Manager section describes this in more detail.

Note that the opened XML file, if modified, can only be saved as a standard XML file it cannot be reinserted into the package.

Quick-Opening an Open XML file directly

Normally, when viewing an XML file it is recommended to open the package and then select the XML file you need explicitly. However, as a convenience feature, SketchPath has default behaviour for opening Microsoft Open XML Documents directly without viewing the package first.

This 'quick' method has limited use though, because of the way XML file names depend on the names of the objects they define, and only one object is opened at a time. For example 'Sheet1.xml' in an xslx structure only exists if this Excel Worksheet was not renamed. The defaults are listed below:

Excel 2007 (xlsx): Opens 'sheet1.xml'

Word 2007 (docx): Opens 'document.xml'

PowerPoint 2007 (pptx): Opens 'slide1.xml'