Chosing Right Mobile Output Format

Oracle Documaker Mobile provides default snippets in an XML format. However the final targeted delivery format is often HTML. The XML, which serves to capture raw data content from a Documaker document transaction, is then often transformed to HTML through industry standard XSL. The XSL provides the rules for transforming the raw content XML into device responsive HTML5. The snippet output format for your implementation may be XML, HTML or may be another format based on your company's needs. However, when choosing between output formats from your snippets, consider the following points below.

Output Format Considerations

The default Snippets produce an XML output format that is transformed to HTML via EXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). However, Snippets can be composed in any UTF8 based text script including HTML, HTML5 and Comma Separated Values (CSV), etc. To create a decision point for the team to determine what snippet output format is to be used, your company may have standards and requirements for the targeted formats. Evaluate other factors like:

  1. Skill set of the team
  2. Requirements of the delivery and the end users including:
    • Intended supported browsers
    • Intended devices or platforms
    • Speed and responsiveness
  3. Ability of the output format to deliver the intended customer experience

A popular choice for mobile output is HTML5. Mobile output rendered in HTML5 from Documaker can leverage all parts of the HTML5 standards including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS/CSS3), JavaScript (and JS based frameworks such as jQuery), AJAX, Web Fonts and all other HTML/HTML5 based features. This allows you to design a mobile experience using all of the latest industry standard capabilities.

While selecting the format of snippet contents, consider the following when choosing between producing XML that must be transformed (client or server side) when compared with producing HTML directly from Documaker Mobile.

Option 1: XML Output Option 2: HTML Output
Payload depends on location of transformation. If transformation occurs on the server, the ultimate payload may be small The client may have a large payload
Follows industry XSLT standards to transform output to responsive HTML/JavaScript Raw output from Documaker may be usable in the browser, does not require further transformation.
Tools such as Dreamweaver is capable of understanding XSLT