Software

ILC Software

The main ILC software portal gives you access to ILC software packages and data samples. If you work at DESY, you usually don't need to install all the packages on your computer. To get started, you can follow:

XSL Stylesheet for Marlin XML Steering Files

Adrian created an XSL stylesheet that can be used to display Marlin XML Steering Files in a nicer way – you can find it at http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsl. There are two ways to use the stylesheet:

• Insert an “xml-stylesheet” processing instruction at the beginning of your XML steering file and open it in a web browser that can process XSL (e. g. Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari):

  <?xml-stylesheet href="http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsl" type="application/xml"?>

  If you download the stylesheet to your local host, the “href” attribute can also be a relative or absolute local path.

• Run your XML steering file through an XSLT processor to transform it to HTML. Afterwards you can open the resulting HTML file in your browser (should work with any client, even with no-frills browsers like Lynx or no-good browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer):

  shell> xsltproc http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsl marlin-steer.xml > marlin-steer.html

  Again, if you download the stylesheet to your local host, the first command-line argument can also be a relative or absolute local path. The XSLT processor might already be installed on your system (e. g. SL3 or SL4).

Maybe this can be useful for somebody … Of course it cannot work wonders, but it can at least reduce all the XML clutter that is unpleasant to the human eye.

Update on 2008-05-02

The stylesheet will now provide hyperlinks from the <execute> section to the respective <processor> and <group> elements.

Update on 2008-05-30

Improved strict HTML compliance including doctype-system and Content-Style-Type. The resulting HTML output will now pass Validome without objection.

XML Schema for Marlin XML Steering Files

Adrian created an XML Schema that can be used to validate Marlin XML Steering Files – you can find it at http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsd. As Sebastian already pointed out, DTDs are not powerful enough to describe the structure of the steering files, but XML Schema can do the job. Up to now, there has not been a strict description of the steering file format, but this schema should come reasonably close to the actual behaviour of the Marlin XML Parser.

However, you should note that the schema is rather strict, whereas the Marlin XML Parser handles things a bit more loosely (e. g. it will simply ignore unknown elements, and it doesn’t care too much about the order of elements). This means that Marlin may accept steering files which do not fully comply with the schema (and which may not even be well-formed).

There are different ways to use the schema:

• Run your steering file(s) through a command-line tool such as xmllint, which can act as a validating XML parser:

  xmllint --noout --schema http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsd *.xml

• Use your favourite online XML validator (e. g. the DecisionSoft Validator or the W3C Checking Service), submit the schema and your steering file (the “schema instance”), and have your file validated.

• To establish a permanent connection to the schema, modify the <marlin> root element of your steering file:

  <marlin xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://ilcsoft.desy.de/marlin/marlin.xsd">

  Now you can validate your steering file as before, but without explicitly specifying the schema every time.

• There may be some fancy XML editors that can read a schema and assist you while you edit your steering file.

Maybe this can be useful for somebody …

Update on 2008-05-06

Include all classes derived from “LCObject” (except “LCRunHeader”) as possible values for the <parameter> attributes “lcioInType” and “lcioOutType”.

Update on 2008-06-02

Improved documentation.

Even More ILC Software

can be found at the Linear Collider Simulation Software page.

Dumps of the Central Mokka Geometry Database

A dump of the central Mokka geometry database (running on polui01.in2p3.fr) is automatically created every night. Here you can browse the dump repository which contains the ten most recent versions. Note that the database “mysql”, which is used internally by MySQL to manage access permissions, is not included in the dump. Furthermore, the temporary databases are empty and their management table is reset.