Support for both CSS and XSL-FO with
Antenna House Formatter V5.0
Scheduled Release - February, 2009

Tokyo, Japan - December 8th, 2008 - Antenna House Inc., with corporate headquarters in Tokyo, is very pleased to announce the immediate availability of the Beta Version of Antenna House Formatter V5.0 with the newly added support for formatting HTML and XML into print and PDF using CSS3.

Now with Antenna House Formatter V5.0 page layouts can be specified using either CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 under development by the W3C) or XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects) for formatting documents for PDF, print and paged media.

Benefits of AH Formatter V5.0

With V5.0 you can now be formatting HTML for PDF and print within minutes of installing the software. Building on the wide use of CSS and the strengths of the CSS3 specification Antenna House Formatter V5.0 has added the capability that now enables web designers to use CSS to add high quality 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.

Antenna House XSL Formatter, based on the W3C Recommendation for XSL-FO, has long been recognized as the most powerful and proven standards based formatting software available and is used worldwide in demanding applications where the need is to format XML into documents. Now that same power and functionality is available for formatting HTML and XML with CSS3.

Key Features of AH Formatter

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.

Why Two Stylesheet Languages?

The fact that there are two stylesheet languages, both developed by W3C, has caused some confusion. The answer can be found in the table, graphic and explanation below:

CSS XSL
Can be used with HTML?yesno
Can be used with XHTML?yesyes
Can be used with XML?yesyes
Transformation Language (XSLT)noyes
SyntaxCSS XSL-FO

The unique features are that CSS can be used to style HTML & XML documents. XSL, on the other hand, is able to transform documents. With XSL-FO XSL can be used to format documents for print and PDF. XSL can also be used to transform XML data into HTML/CSS documents on the Web server. This way, the two languages complement each other and can be used together.

This illustration from the W3C shows the relationship between CSS, XSL and the final presentation. XML documents can be rendered in three different ways: (1) if the document doesn't have to be transformed, use CSS. Otherwise, use XSLT, the transformation language of XSL, in one of two ways: either (2) generate the style properties together with the rearranged text, using a sub-language of XSL called XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects); or (3) generate a new XML or HTML document and provide a CSS style sheet for that new document.

xsl-and-css

Use CSS for styling web content or where information doesn't have to be transformed. Use XSL-FO for styling content from XML based content management systems, with content such as DITA, DocBook and S1000D, and where transformation is needed.

AH Formatter Family

The AH Formatter V5 family consists of the following 6 products:

Product Name Item
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.

V5.0 Lite

AH Formatter V5.0 Lite is a lower priced version for those customers who produce smaller documents (under 300 pages) and don't need all the advanced features of the standard version. Lite offers the same GUI, speed, interfaces and graphic support but for less than one-third of the price. The Standalone and Server versions of Lite fits many of today's production requirements. Some of the features and limits of Lite are:

V5 Supported Platform

Upgrading from V4.3 to V5.0

Customers who are within their 90 day warranty period or who have a current Annual Maintenance Agreement can upgrade to V5.0 AH XSL or CSS Formatter at no charge, upgrade to V5.0 AH Formatter with the difference in price. For customers whose maintenance agreement has expired or who are no longer within their warranty period Antenna House offers the upgrade for either 50% of the purchase price of the software or allows the customer to purchase the Annual Maintenance Agreement retroactive to when their previous Agreement or Warranty ended.

Contact

For more information about features, availability and pricing please contact:

International Sales,
Antenna House, Inc. (USA)
3844 Kennett Pike
Suite 200
Greenville, Delaware 19807 USA
Telephone: +1 302-427-2456
mail:info@antennahouse.com

Newest information about Beta version and the download link are found on the Antenna House Web sites.

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