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AH Formatter V5.x - Summary

by Antenna House - Product Type: Application

Summary

AH Formatter V5.x by Antenna House

URLs: ah-formatter-5, ah formatter 5, ahformatter5, antenna-house, antenna house, antennahouse

Format documents for print and PDF using CSS or XSL-FO. Antenna House Formatter V5.0 now supports page layouts specified using either CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects) for formatting documents for PDF and print. With AH Formatter users can now select the stylesheet language and content strategy that best suits their business needs. XSL-FO has long been recognized as a standard for formatting XML for print and PDF and CSS as the standard for displaying HTML on the Web. The missing piece for web developers has always been how to go from Web/HTML to print and PDF with properly formatted pages and documents. AH Formatter V5.0 is the answer.

Antenna House Formatter V5.0 now supports page layouts specified using either CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects) for formatting documents for PDF and print. Now users can select the stylesheet language and content strategy that best suits their business needs.

XSL-FO has long been recognized as the standard for formatting XML for print and PDF and CSS as the standard for displaying HTML on the web. The missing piece for web developers has always been how to go from web/HTML to print and PDF with properly formatted pages and documents. V5.0 is the answer.

Building on the strengths of the CSS3 specification and Antenna House XSL Formatter, Antenna House Formatter V5.0 has added the capability that now enables web designers to use CSS to add print and PDF output to their systems by using all the features and functionality that Antenna House has developed during the past 8 years as the supplier of the most powerful XSL-FO formatting software available.

XSL-FO:Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 recommended from the W3C. See also "XSL-FO 1.1 Conformance".

CSS:Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1, CSS3 Working Draft

In addition to the powerful formatting functions by using XSL-FO available with the V4.3, Antenna House V5.0 has added the ability for formatting HTML and XML with CSS.

Antenna House Formatter V5.0 offers all the features (GUI, support for over 50 languages, PDF generation), W3C compliance, extensions, the significantly enhanced performance, unlimited document size and SVG support, vector support for EMF and WMF, new output capabilities through the new INX Creator Option and CGM Option, MathML native drawing, XSL Report Designer integration, support for SVG output by SVG Output Option, PANTONE color support by PANTONE Option and Web Service Interface to support the use of XSL Formatter via the Internet, the two-pass formatting that makes it possible to format huge documents, high quality EPS embedding in PDF, the enhanced PDF features, AcroForms, PDF/A, PDF1.7, PostScript output, PDF Digital Signature and numerous other enhancements by AXF extension. New to AH Formatter is the XPS Output Option that enables the output of XPS (XML Paper Specification) files.

The AH Formatter V5 is available in 6 variations:

AH Formatter V5.0 - Full support for the layouts specified by both XSL-FO and CSS

AH XSL Formatter V5.0 - Full support for the layouts specified by only XSL-FO

AH CSS Formatter V5.0 - Full support for the layouts specified by only CSS

AH Formatter V5.0 Lite - Support for the layouts specified by both XSL-FO and CSS with restrictions

AH XSL Formatter V5.0 Lite - Support for the layouts specified by only XSL-FO with restrictions

AH CSS Formatter V5.0 Lite - Support for the layouts specified by only CSS with restrictions

Highlights:

Compliant with XSL 1.1

Corresponds to XSL 1.1 which is a XSL-FO specification. AH Formatter V5.0 faithfully implements quite almost elements of the XSL specification and properties.

Compliant with CSS

Supports CSS2.1 and CSS3. Page models of CSS3 is also supported, now that high-quality page formatting will be available.

High speed

V5 is the fastest formatting software available.In batch mode V5 can start to produce PDF output immediately from the inputted file. Furthermore V5 improves the performance on a multi-processor system.

Passes Acid2

AH Formatter V5.0 has passed the Acid2 test published by "The Web Standards Project (WaSP)" that measures the conforming level to CSS.

Format virtually any size document

Antenna House Formatter can format a document of virtually any size whether it is a publication, tens of thousands of invoices, reports or personalized one to one documents.

PANTONE Color Support

AH Formatter V5 provides the ability for more than 1000 PANTONE Colors to be converted into RGB or CMYK values automatically by using AH Formatter PANTONE Option. Possible to specify the PANTONE colors for separation color (spot color) simply by putting only the name of the PANTONE colors in FO.

Supports PDF/X and PDF/A

AH Formatter V5.0 supports PDF/X. PDF/X is a specification that places much value on exchanging date and defined by ISO for printing purpose. PDF/A is a format for long-term preservation of an electronic document and it is also defined by ISO.

Web Service Interface

Web Service Interface V2.3 is an option for Antenna House AH Formatter Server Licenses to further support the use of AH Formatter V5.0 via the Internet using SOAP/HTTP.

Accessible PDF

AH Formatter V5.0 can generate the Tagged PDF for enhancing the accessibility to persons with sight problems. This is a function indispensable to comply with Section 508, the law of the United States enforced on June 21, 2001.

Table Auto Layout

AH Formatter V5 supports table-layout="auto." in the XSL-FO specification, which is not supported by many of the formatting software. This function arranges the table layout suitably without specifying the width of a cell. It's suitable for almost all tables which do not require the strict value of the width, and is very convenient. When the formatting speed poses a problem, please specify table-layout="fixed" instead and specify fixed width in all cells.

Integration Interface

Antenna House provides Command line interface, .NET interface, COM interface, Java interface and C++/C interface. The various interfaces make for easy system integration of Formatter with web applications, content management systems, and other software products.

The .NET interface and the COM interface are available for Windows only.

High quality PDF for SVG, MathML, EMF and WMF

Vector information for SVG, MathML, EMF and WMF is retained in PDF, thus enhancing the quality of output images and meeting the increasing demand for delivery of vectors in the output.

V5.0 makes it possible to draw high-resolution MathML in PDF. Lite is available to use with AH Formatter MathML Option.

PostScript output and SVG output

AH Formatter PostScript Output Option makes PostScript output available. With the new SVG Output module it is now possible to create SVG 1.1, SVG Basic, and SVG Tiny files using AH Formatter V5.0. This function requires AH Formatter SVG Output Option.

Possible to get the .NET native parser output

With the .NET Interface when XSL-FO is generated from XML and XSL using an XSLT processor that transformation can now be passed directly and seamlessly to Formatter without passing it through a temporary file first.

The .NET and the COM interfaces can now also get the DOM directly without passing through a temporary file. This has the effect of slightly improving performance.

Direct Printer output

In Windows version, it's possible to output the formatted result directly to the printer without passing through PDF. It's also possible to get the formatted result and print it immediately by using GUI.

Multilingual Language

V5.0 supports almost any language which is supported by Unicode including Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Hangul, Arabic, Hebrew and Thai. It offers the abilities to write in vertical mode, to run the text from right to left as in Arabic and Hebrew and also to create multilingual documents with language mixtures on the same page and even on the same line.

Supports the embedding of PDF into PDF

An arbitrary page of other PDF can be embedded into PDF.

Possible to hyphenate over 40 or more languages

The former "Hyphenation Option" is now a standard part of Formatter. The Hyphenation function integrates the very powerful hyphenation algorithms from Computer Hyphenation Ltd., which enhances the quality of hyphenation and greatly simplifies setting up Formatter to hyphenate over 40 different languages.

AH Formatter support for DITA

AH Formatter V5.0 has a new set of DITAtoFO Stylesheets for the DITA Open Toolkit 1.4 that supports bookmarks, table of contents, indexes and several other features has been made public.

DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The architecture and a related DTD was developed by IBM. DITA is organized around the principle of the topic as the highest level structure and is intended to support the reusability of content. It has been developed especially for managing a large set of documentation to be distributed in multiple channels.

DITA has grown well and its specification has been defined by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee since 2004. DITA version 1.0 was approved as an OASIS Standard on May 3rd, 2005.

Features of DITA

The topic as an organizing principle

Reuse of whole topics, as well as reuse of partial topics through the use of content references

Specialization of elements to provide

Property-based processing that makes topics easier to find

Making use of existing tagsets and tools

Antenna House DITAtoFO Stylesheet

The DITA Open Toolkit is an implementation of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee's specification for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) DTDs and Schemas. DITA-OT (DITA Open Toolkit) transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into deliverable formats such as HTML, DocBook, and PDF. The current version is 1.4.3.

Antenna House provides a stylesheet that transforms DITA into XSL-FO so that you can format and print through the DITA Open Toolkit 1.4.3 using AH Formatter. This kit is composed of the batch file, the shell script file and the ant build file.

What's new in AH Formatter V5.3 MR2

Enhancements: When outputting the standard output intent to PDF/X, you can specify whether the color profile is to be embedded or not.

XSL - The following issues have been corrected:

When there was a spanned cell, the rule of "Border conflict resolution" was ignored.

When fo:folio-prefix/fo:folio-suffix were specified, footnotes were not processed correctly.

An error occurred when the value of internal-destination belonged to fo:basic-link and the ref-id value belonged to fo:page-number-citation were specified to the id value of fo:index-range-begin.

An error ocurred when outputting tagged PDF with specific data.

start-float and block-container overlapped each other.

Keep-together.within-page="always" was not correctly processed when formatting a two-column document.

text-align:justify did not function correctly when axf:ligature-mode="latin" was made effective.

A rotated table was not formatted correctly.

Start-float and block-container overlapped each other.

When collapse was specified to a table border, the border was not outputted.

The indent value of the list in the previous page was applied to the unrelated list.

The keep-with-previous.within-page="always" setting did not function correctly.

A system error occurred while formatting a multi-column document with fo:block-container.

The float position did not change even if intrusion-displace="block" was specified to the document with float="inside" or float="outside".

When the same change-bar-class was used to multiple fo:change-bar, an error occurred.

An error occurred or the page-break setting was not processed correctly when there was the specification to force a page break before the block with span=all within the block container with column settings.

When a page break occurred in the block-container with column settings, the white space for space-after generated.

The position of side notes was not correct.

fo:page-number-citation was not correctly processed when two pass formatting was specified.

The specification of axf:avoid-widow-words="true" did not become effective.

Common - The following issues have been corrected:

The character information caused the output size to be larger when outputting to PostScript.

When the table was rotated, data was not correctly outputted.

Some parts were not correct when rendering EMF.

The text was not correctly outputted when rendering EMF.

JavaScript specified by axf:document-info was not correctly outputted to PDF.

An error occurred when outputting tagged PDF.

When the value was specified with the expression, an error occurred if 0 was included.

An internal link was not correctly processed when formatting in two pass mode.

The image collapsed when outputting tiff to PDF.

When the output PDF file had a 3D object, an error occurred when opening with Acrobat.

The position of the vowel sign of Devanagari characters might not be correct.

Punctuations at the end of line were not aligned even if end was specified to punctuation-trim.

The exception setting of hyphenation was not effective.

When the file name of the hyphenation exception dictionary was made as language code_country code.xml, it was not effective.

The ligature became invalid in a paragraph where U+200C or U+200D were included.

When axf:punctuation-spacing was specified, successive punctuation marks overlapped each other.

The pair kerning was not effective with some European fonts.

When bicubic was specified in downsampling settings, an error occurred while opening the output PDF with Acrobat.

Arabic script just before ZERO WIDTH JOINER were not connected to the left script.

Other - The following issues have been corrected:

When illegal tiff was processed the error message and the error level generated were incorrect.

A wrong description was found in some part of the DTD in the manual.

A system error occasionally occurred by specific data.

When the file name with a specific character was specified to the Document/Stylesheet dialog in GUI in Windows version, the formatting did not start.

What's new in AH Formatter V5.3 R1

Barcode Generator Option is added.

The following features have been added to the PostScript Option:

Fonts can now be specified whether embedded in PostScript by noembed-font in the Option Setting File.

External links specified by the relative address can now be converted to either of the action types of the PDF link properties by use-launch-for-relative-uri in the Option Setting File.

The following elements have been added:

axf:formatter-config

axf:hyphenation-info

The following properties have been added:

axf:line-number-orientation

axf:abbreviation-character-count

axf:suppress-folio-prefix

axf:suppress-folio-suffix

axf:hyphenate-hyphenated-word

It's now possible to hyphenate another language appearing in the CJK document by script-language-in-CJK in the Option Setting File.

CSS - The following issues have been corrected:

Even if the same text and the setting were specified for the header, the output result was different.

An exception error occasionally occurred by specific CSS data.

The formatting process did not end if data has the side floating.

When the page break occurred in the float page, the content was not outputted to the next page.

XSL - The following issues have been corrected:

Justify specified to inline-container was not occasionally correctly processed.

When there was U+200F, the line break was not correctly processed.

The Japanese font was selected to the Roman character space at the top of the block when xml:lang="ja" was specified.

The page overflowed when the page break occurred in the middle of the table in block-container due to the change of the page master and page size.

When axf:overflow-replace was specified to the vertical-written block-container, it produced horizontal writing.

The 'CELL ARRAY' instruction was processed incorrectly and did not display when drawing CGM.

The column document was not processed when there was a footnote.

When overflow="repeat" was specified to the vertical-written block-container, a column break or a page break occurred.

The page overflowed when the page master was switched in order to break a page in the nested table and change the column.

When text-align="justify" was specified to the block in the two-column document, the block overflowed.

When axf:punctuation-trim="all" was specified, single-byte parentheses occasionally overlapped.

The specification of the hyphenation exception dictionary was not correctly processed.

When PDF file was made from the area tree, the annotation was not correctly outputted.

When two-pass formatting was done, the size of the PDF became larger than ordinal.

The exception handling of the Hungarian hyphenation was not correctly produced.

The specification of SVG:font-weight was not effective.

The position of the revision bar was incorrect.

The axf:text-align-string specification was not effective.

An error occurred with PDF output when the field value was specified to the invalid axf:form-field-option.

Table cells overflowed with specific data.

When background-color is specified to fo:table-header, the PDF tag was incorrect.

The table overflow was not detected.

When rounding the corner of the table with the footer by specifying axf:border-radius, it also affected the cell that was not the corner.

An error was not outputted even if the overflow occurred in the block with span="all" in the column document.

When there was U+200B at the end of fo:block and it was located at the end of line, it was sent to the next line and white space was generated.

When PDF/A was generated from the area tree, an error occurred because color-profile-name was not reflected on the area tree.

An empty page was outputted without generating an error when incorrect size was specified.

When PDF was outputted from specific data in Mac version, "20294 Floating point exception error" occasionally occurred.

Even if break-before="page" was specified with specific data, the page did not break.

The float in the list overlapped with contents below.

The page break was not correctly produced in the block-container in the column document when padding-after was specified.

The footnote number was not correct.

The footnote number in the table was correct.

Common - The following issues have been corrected:

The font that has only the SpecificID=5 entry in the name table became eligible.

When specifying PDF/A-1b:2005, PDF/A-1a:2005, PDF/X-3:2003, and PDF/X-3:2002 to FO without the fo:color-profile specification and outputting PDF, segmentation fault was generated in Unix system platform.

An exception error occurred with specific data.

CGM was not drawn nor outputted to PDF correctly.

When tagged PDF was generated, program lagged.

The PDF tag when generating PDF/A produced an error with Acrobat9 or later.

The image that could not be embedded in Linux version was made available by converting into the bit map as well as Windows version.

When data that used the non-CID OpenType font was outputted to PDF/A, an preflight error was generated.

A fatal error occurred when outputting PDF/X-1a:2001 from specific data.

In drawing SVG, the position of characters was not correct.

When embedding the same PDF file, multiple PDF files were occasionally embedded.

When outputting PDF/A and PDF/X by using data without fo:declarations in Mac and Linux version, the segmentation fault occurred.

A specific CGM was not drawn nor outputted.

When turning on (true) the image-color-profile output in the PDF Output Option, "(3346) Unsupported ICC Color Profile Version Error" was produced.

Some characters in the specific PDF were not displayed in the GUI.

The block-container with the reference-orientation="90" specification overflowed.

Format documents for print and PDF using CSS or XSL-FO.

Pricing: AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (32-bit) 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (32-bit) 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (32-bit) 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (32-bit) 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (64-bit) 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (64-bit) 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (64-bit) 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Windows (64-bit) 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris x86 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris x86 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris x86 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris x86 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris SPARC 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris SPARC 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris SPARC 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Solaris SPARC 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (32-bit) 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (32-bit) 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (32-bit) 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (32-bit) 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (64-bit) 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (64-bit) 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (64-bit) 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Linux (64-bit) 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Macintosh 1 Server License (one processor only) (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Macintosh 1 Additional Processor License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Macintosh 1 Developer (SDK) License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 Standard for Macintosh 1 Standalone License (includes 90 day maintenance subscription), AH Formatter - Annual Maintenance Annual Maintenance for Server, AH Formatter - Annual Maintenance Annual Maintenance for Developer, AH Formatter - Annual Maintenance Annual Maintenance for Standalone, AH Formatter - Annual Maintenance Annual Maintenance for Additional CPU License

Evals & Downloads: Read the AH Formatter Documentation, View the functional comparison XSL Formatter Lite and XSL Formatter Standard, Download the AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 for 32-bit Windows evaluation on to your computer - Expires after 90 days, Download the AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 for 32-bit Linux evaluation on to your computer - Expires after 90 days, Download the AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 for 64-bit Linux evaluation on to your computer - Expires after 90 days, Download the AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 for Solaris x86 evaluation on to your computer - Expires after 90 days, Download the AH Formatter V5.3 MR2 for Macintosh evaluation on to your computer - Expires after 90 days

Operating System for Deployment: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Sun Solaris 10, HP-UX 11.x, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.x, RedHat Linux 9.x, RedHat Linux 8.x, SUSE Linux 8.x, Mac OS X

Architecture of Product: 32Bit

Product Type: Application

Product Class: Component Development Tools

Keywords: CSSFormatter Formattor DITA format formats formatting layout page pages

XML Extensible Markup

Conversion Convert converts converting

Print Preview Printing previews prints

User Interface Collections UI

PDF

Part numbers: PC-532054-400457 532054-400457 PC-532054-400469 532054-400469 PC-532054-400458 532054-400458 PC-532054-400459 532054-400459 PC-532054-400477 532054-400477 PC-532054-400478 532054-400478 PC-532054-400479 532054-400479 PC-532054-400480 532054-400480 PC-532054-400460 532054-400460 PC-532054-400470 532054-400470 PC-532054-400461 532054-400461 PC-532054-400462 532054-400462 PC-532054-400481 532054-400481 PC-532054-400482 532054-400482 PC-532054-400483 532054-400483 PC-532054-400484 532054-400484 PC-532054-400463 532054-400463 PC-532054-400471 532054-400471 PC-532054-400464 532054-400464 PC-532054-400465 532054-400465 PC-532054-400485 532054-400485 PC-532054-400486 532054-400486 PC-532054-400487 532054-400487 PC-532054-400488 532054-400488 PC-532054-400466 532054-400466 PC-532054-400472 532054-400472 PC-532054-400467 532054-400467 PC-532054-400468 532054-400468 PC-532054-400473 532054-400473 PC-532054-400474 532054-400474 PC-532054-400475 532054-400475 PC-532054-400476 532054-400476