nSymbol Tag XProc no-code editor released

Hi everyone,


I am pleased to announce general availability of the nSymbolTag XProc
pipeline editor and engine <https://www.nsymbol.com/automate-task-pipelines>.
Tag is able to edit and run pipelines as defined by the recently published
version 1.0 of XProc. It is a desktop application that runs on Windows and
Mac computers.


Tag is a knowledge automation toolkit, which provides a combination of
no-code and raw markup editors. It includes support for XProc and several
other public open standards and leverages commonalities between them (e.g.,
XProc pipelines and XSLT transforms each use expressions, so Tag has a
no-code expression editor that works for both).


Pipelines are an amazing technology that offers an entirely new way to
imagine computing tasks. They serve as a glue between many different
feature sets and technologies. Pipelines are now a central pillar of Tag’s
design.


Tag includes its own XProc engine which partially implements XProc 1.0. It
also deploys a copy of the Morgana XProc engine which fully implements
XProc. Making it easy to switch between engines will encourage
compatibility and the development of a predictable user experience.


Note that Morgana is not fully integrated into Tag and is treated as an
external application. It is called using URLs just as you would from the
command line. You can also call other XProc engines that have been
installed on your computer/network (e.g., Calabash) in exactly the same
way. As long as the engine accepts a run command (e.g., as an executable
JAR) that accepts a pipeline document URL, it can run pipelines within Tag.


Tag’s internal XProc engine has the advantage of full integration. It
offers a somewhat richer user experience including accurate progress
reporting, results inspection and generation of a pipeline run summary
(e.g., what files were read and saved). It is not intended for use in
server applications and cannot be called from the command line or as a
batch file.


Another advantage of Tag’s internal engine is custom steps. These steps are
not available when running pipelines with Morgana or another external
engine. The current list of custom steps includes:


   - Call a secure web API connector (with obfuscated apikeys)
   - Open a CSV file and convert it to XML
   - Save (generated) *.fo word processing content as *.docx files
   - Convert JSON to/from XML in a simplified way
   - Call a SQL database
   - Call a SPARQL ontology / knowledge graph
   - Prompt the user for input to a running pipeline
   - Call machine learning algorithms (pending)

Tag is organized into apps. Pipelines are edited and run in the *Automate*
app, which also supports XSLT transformations and XQuery expressions. Other
apps include:


   - *Connect* – to call web (REST) APIs and create Connectors
   - *Scribe* – for more complex content generation using XSLT and RNG
   - *Samples* – a way to clone working samples for all apps

Tag is available for use under the following end user subscriptions:


   - *Community* – always free; includes full access to Connect and Samples
   app and partial access to Automate and Scribe apps
   - *Starter* – US $14/month; includes everything in Community plus full
   access to Automate app
   - *Individual* – US $29/month; includes everything in Starter plus full
   access to Scribe app

We would appreciate feedback from readers of this list and anyone else
interested in pipelines. Do you have suggestions for improvement, or ideas
for interesting samples that we can share? Please give Tag a test run and
let us know if you think this is a useful tool for the pipeline user
community.

More information can be found at https://www.nsymbol.com and
https://www.nsymbol.com/automate-task-pipelines.

Best regards,

Rob Brown
nSymbol Technology Inc.
www.nsymbol.com