Inexware has developed a WAP simulator, available as an online service on their site.

Very realistic (the visitor can switch their virtual terminal between four real WAP phones), this simulator has been written as a Java servlet.

It transforms the WAP WML documents into HTML, and also the WAP scripting language WMLScript into Javascript (with an adaptation to the browser vendor) and WAP WBMP images into gif files.

Generating Javascript through XSLT has been considered too onerous, and the transformations are done using plain Java, and the Apache Xerces-J parser through its SAX API.

Each WML deck is transformed into an HTML page, the WML cards being coded as HTML layers controlled by Javascript.

The transformation of the images (from WBMP to GIF) is performed dynamically using ACME classes.

Emmanuel Hugonnet, Manager of the WAP activity at Inexware, and co-author of this service with Louis Samoyault, explained that this simulator has been developed to show their technical skills in WAP, XML and Java:

The goal of the exercise was to show our know-how for WAP, Java and XML. Concerning the operational licenses, our sales department handles this and, "a priori", the distribution of the code isn't planned.