AH Formatter V5.2 offers support for both CSS and XSL-FO and numerous other enhancements.

Antenna House Formatter V5.2 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. V5.2 is the answer.

Building on the strengths of the CSS3 specification and Antenna House XSL Formatter, Antenna House Formatter V5.2 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 availalbe.

• 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 V5.2 has added the ability for formatting HTML and XML with CSS.

Antenna House Formatter V5.2 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 MIF Creator Option, 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 Interface for Formatter 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 outout of XPS (XML Paper SpecificationI) files.

The six products are prepared according to the formatting capability of AH Formatter V5.2. Please see also AH Formatter Family.

AH Formatter V5.2formats XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO), XML with XSL stylesheet, or HTML with CSS stylesheet. The formatted result will be displayed in GUI and outputted or printed to PDF. (Display and printing are availalbe only with the Windows version). The work flow is as shown below.

The following illustrates Formatters workflow:

• When an (X) HTML document is inputted, AH Formatter V5 formats it immediately using a default HTML stylesheet.
• When an XML document or a (X) HTML document with a CSS stylesheet are inputted, AH Formatter V5 formats it immediately.
• When an XSL Formatting Object is inputted, AH Formatter V5.2 formats it immediately.
• When an XML document and an XSL stylesheet are inputted, AH Formatter V5.2 transforms them to XSL Formatting Object using XSLT processor and formats the XSL Formatting Object.
• When an XML document and the Project file of XSL Report Designer are both inputted, AH Formatter V5.2 transforms it into XSL Formatting Objects using XSL Report Designer.

New Enhancements of AH Formatter V5.2 from AH Formatter V5.2 are as follows:

• The following features are newly added with PDF output.
  • It's now available to embed all the characters the font has in PDF.
  • RGB images are made available to convert into CMYK automatically when outputting PDF/X, PDF/A.no-LT
  • It's now available to embed PDF with 3D object.no-LT
  • It's now available to output pages in reverse order to PDF.
  • It's now available to specify 128AES/256AES to encryption key length.
  • It's now available to customize the tag name of Tagged PDF with the pdftag extension property.no-LT
• The following properties are newly added or extended.
  • axf:overflow-align
  • axf:line-number-prefixno-LT
• Values for the following property are extended.
  • justify is added to display-align
  • column is added to table-omit-header-at-breakV5.1MR1 no-LT
• Characters specified to script-chars in the Option Setting file are made availabe to evaluate as scripts specified to the script.V5.1MR2
• WinAnsiEncoding is made available to specify when embedding TrueType fonts using embed-font-encoding in the Option Setting File.V5.1MR2
• It's made available to specify how much the underline, strikethrough and overline exceed the length of a word by text-decoration-mode in the Option Setting File. V5.1MR1
• Support for BIDI with the following scripts when rendering SVG data.
  • Arab : Arabic
  • Hebr : Hebrew
  • Thai : Thai
  • Deva : Devalagari
• The following attributes are added to the Font Configuration File.
  • It's now available to specify the range of Unicode applied to the specified font with unicode-range.
  • The font size of a specific font can be adjusted with font-size-adjust.
  • The base line of a specific font can be adjusted with baseline-adjust.
• The following features are newly added with CGM Option.
  • Support for the Character Orientation element.
  • Support for the compression type attribute of the TILE element, 6 and 9.
• Support for all the notation attributes belong to the <menclose> property of General Layout with MathML rendering.
• It's now available to specify CSS stylesheet by the stream input with .Net Interface and Java Interface.V5.1MR2
• The following CSS elements and properties are newly implemented.
  • CSS2.1
    • :first-line pseudo-element
    • 'display' property
    • 'float' property
    • 'content' property
    • 'quotes' property
    • 'empty-cells' property
  • CSS3
    • 'background-size' property
    • 'box-decoration-break' property
• The MO:DCA Output Oution is added. (Under development)

• All but "x64 edition" and the "64-bit version" are compiled with 32 bit.
• Hereinafter unless otherwise explicitly mentioned, the phrase "Windows version" includes both Windows version and Windows x64 version.
• Hereinafter unless otherwise explicitly mentioned, the phrase "Linux version" includes both Linux version and Linux 64bit version.
• Please see "Font Setting" for supported fonts. In addition, fonts are not included in the Windows version.
• Standard 14 fonts in non-Windows version have the metrics information file only. They do not contain the file of the outline information. If you want to embed these fonts to PDF or PS file, please buy whole fonts by yourself.
• Please confirm the necessary environment variables at "Environment Variable" in the online manual.
• Please confirm the installed modules at "Installed Modules" in the online manual.
• The printing function on the Windows version depends on Windows-based printer drivers.
• Optional PDF Digital Signature Module can be used with Windows version, but it cannot be used with Windows x64 version.

Administration Rights

XSLT Processor

Languages

Encodings

Formatting engine and Interface

For further information, please refer to Q&A Page on our web site.

• AH Formatter Q&A

Antenna House provides the Formatter Mailing List. For subscribing please see:

• Maintenance Service & Technical Support Guideline

Antenna House provides numerous XSL-FO samples for testing and learning purpose. Please see:

• Stylesheet Tutorial, Sample Files of Formatting Objects and Sample Stylesheets

Antenna House provides CSS Tutorials and Samples for testing and learning purpose. Please see:

• Information on CSS Formatting, Tutorials and Samples

For more information, technical support and service needs, please contact us by e-mail.

• support@antennahouse.com