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XMLmind XSL-FO Converter Changelog

What's new in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.4.2

Feb 28, 2024
  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Updated FlatLaf to version 3.3. (On Linux, the FlatLaf light theme is used as the default Look & Feel of XMLmind XSL Utility.)
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 12.4.
  • Upgraded XMLResolver to version 5.2.3.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.17.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.9.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 2.0, which supports processing DocBook 5.2 documents.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.5.1.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.15.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.4.1 (Jul 20, 2023)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Updated FlatLaf to version 3.1.1. (On Linux, the FlatLaf light theme is used as the default Look & Feel of XMLmind XSL Utility.)
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 11.5.0.
  • Upgraded XMLResolver to version 5.2.0.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.3.2.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.5.0.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.14.0.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java™ 20 platforms.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.4.0 (Jan 23, 2023)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: non-standard extension of XSL-FO property text-decoration. In addition to the decoration type (underline, overline, line-through, etc), it's now possible to specify the color, style (solid, double, dotted, dashed, wavy) and thickness of the text decoration. The syntax used for extended simple properties is identical to the syntax of CSS3 property text-decoration.
  • Actual support of the “simple properties” comprising text-decoration by the RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT output formats varies, but this was already the case for the decoration type (e.g. overline not supported by RTF, WML, DOCX). More information in "Non-standard extension of XSL-FO property text-decoration".
  • XMLmind XSL Utility:
  • Added useful options "Use default viewer" and "Use text editor" to the "Helper Application Editor" dialog box and to its simplified variant, the "Helper Application Not Found" dialog box.
  • Updated FlatLaf to version 2.6. (On Linux, the FlatLaf light theme is used as the default Look & Feel of XMLmind XSL Utility.)
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Upgraded XML parser Apache Xerces2 Java to version 2.12.2.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 11.4. Doing this required replacing the Apache Commons Resolver (bin/resolver.jar) by the XMLResolver (bin/xmlresolver.jar).
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.16.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.8.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.2.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.3.4.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.12.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java™ 19 platforms and on macOS Ventura (version 13.x).
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: when converting DocBook documents to RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT and PDF, images pointing to "data:" URLs were not rendered.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: the user interface was garbled when very long progress messages (such as messages containing "data:" URLs) were printed during a document conversion.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.3.3 (Aug 1, 2022)

  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Updated FlatLaf to version 2.4. (On Linux, the FlatLaf light theme is used as the default Look & Feel of XMLmind XSL Utility.)
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.3.2.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.11.1.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.1.1.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 10.8.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.7.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java™ 18 platforms.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.3.2 (Jan 20, 2022)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility:
  • The location and size of the application is now persistent across conversion sessions.
  • Unless the "Use the native file chooser" preference has been enabled (which is not the case by default), the size of the file chooser dialog box is now persistent across conversion sessions.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Updated FlatLaf (XMLmind XSL Utility Look & Feel on Linux) to version 1.6.5.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.1.0.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.3, which leverages jQuery to v3.6.0.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.10, which fixes bugs related to <navtitle>.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter, which passed all non-regression tests, is now officially supported
  • on Java™ 17 platforms;
  • on macOS Monterey (version 12.0), including on Macs having an Apple® M1 (ARM®) processor; on Windows 11.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.3.1 (Feb 23, 2021)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.8.1.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.1.1.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.11.
  • Updated FlatLaf (XMLmind XSL Utility Look & Feel on Linux) to version 1.0.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.8.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.14.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.6.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: added servlet parameter "idXSLTParameterName" for security reasons. This new servlet parameter contains a regular expression matching XSLT parameter names specifying which XSLT parameters are to be checked by XMLmind XSL Server as having values containing syntactically correct XML or HTML IDs.
  • The sample web.xml file contained in shipped xslsrv.war specifies "root-?id" because XSLT parameter "rootid" is implemented by the DocBook XSL Stylesheets and XSLT parameter "root-id" is implemented by the XHTML XSL Stylesheets.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java™ 15 platforms.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on macOS Big Sur (version 11.0), except on Macs having an Apple M1 (ARM-based) processor. Macs having an Apple M1 will be officially supported by XMLmind Software as soon as both a “native” OpenJDK is available for this platform.
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine, RTF, WML and DOCX output formats: starting from MS-Word 2019+, adjacent paragraphs having the same background color and also some extra space between their text lines looked like a sequence of “stripes”.
  • In previous versions of MS-Word, these adjacent paragraphs used to look like a single block having specified background color. Is this a change in the behavior of MS-Word starting from version 2019 or is it a bug? We don't know. Anyway, this change had unwanted consequences.
  • This bug was caused by the fact that XSL-FO property line-height was always translated to RTF, WML and DOCX as some space between lines having at least a value specified in points. Now, when property line-height is specified as a relative value (e.g."1.2", "120%", "1.2em", "3ex"), it is translated to a multiple of the "Single" line spacing, which seems to fix the bug. Of course, when property line-height is specified as an absolute value (e.g."14pt", "16px"), the bug is still there.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: when specifying the conversion of an XHTML page, option "Use this CSS stylesheet" did not work.
  • Possible incompatibilities:
  • As explained above, XSL-FO property line-height is translated to RTF, WML and DOCX differently than in previous versions of the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine. Therefore documents created using this version may look slightly different in terms of text line spacing when opened in MS-Word.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.3.0 (Aug 28, 2020)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine:
  • It is now possible to add metadata (e.g. the usual author, title, date, etc, but also custom metadata) to the documents created by XFC. (This is XFC equivalent of MS-Word "File|Info|Properties, Advanced Properties".) More information here.
  • It is now possible to control the type of changes which can be made to the documents created by XFC. (This is XFC equivalent of MS-Word "File|Info|Protect Document, Restrict Editing".) For example, XFC can now generate a DOCX file which cannot be modified at all, unless the user types a password. This feature is fully supported only for the DOCX output format. Other output formats have limitations. More information here.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: on Linux, FlatLaf and its light theme (called "FlatLight") is now used as the default Look & Feel. This is needed because on Linux, the “system” Look & Feel (called "Metal") looks rather outdated.
  • If, for any reason, you prefer to use the “system” Look & Feel, please start xslutil by running xslutil -putpref lookAndFeelClassName fallback
  • This setting is done once for all. If after doing that, you finally prefer to revert to FlatLaf, simply run xslutil -delpref lookAndFeelClassName
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the following software components:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.8.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.1.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.10.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.7.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.13.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.5.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java 14 platforms.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.2.0 (Feb 28, 2020)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: element fo:block-container with a reference-orientation attribute equal to 90, 270, -90 or -270 may be used to temporarily switch the page orientation from portrait to landscape. This feature is typically used to help MS-Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice display a wide table or a wide figure. More information here.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine for .NET: upgraded the .NET implementation of the Java™ runtime needed to run XMLmind XSL-FO Converter to IKVM.NET 8.1.5717.0 (which corresponds to Java 1.8.0_45).
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Converting a DocBook document to any XSL-FO based output format now generates PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT files hopefully looking better than before. This is implemented by changing the default values of a large number of DocBook XSL Stylesheets parameters and attribute sets.
  • Upgraded the following components:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.7.1. This new version supports <table orient="land">.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.0.1. The Web Help generated by whc v3 gets a fresh new look. Moreover:
  • It is now “responsive” by default, that is, it adapts its layout to the size of the screen (e.g. it can adapt to the screen of a smartphone in portrait mode). This feature is controlled by new parameter wh-responsive-ui.
  • It does not leverage jQuery UI anymore (only jQuery now). However some new parameters (e.g. wh---navigation-background-color="#F6F8FA") may be used to override most fonts and colors used in the generated Web Help.
  • New parameter wh-ui-language may be used to specify the language used by the messages of the generated Web Help (tab labels, button tool tips, etc). The default is to use the language of the Web browser.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.9.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.6.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.12.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.4.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: added a "Use the native file chooser in preference to the multi-platform file chooser" option to the Preferences dialog, in the General section. This option is turned off by default because file extension filters are not supported when the native file chooser is invoked by Java™.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on Java™ 13 platforms and on macOS Catalina (version 10.15).
  • Bug fixes:
  • Setting shorthand properties to an invalid value (e.g. vertical-align="center" instead of vertical-align="middle", vertical-align being a CSS shorthand mapping to XSL properties alignment-baseline, alignment-adjust, baseline-shift, dominant-baseline) could cause the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine to raise a NullPointerException.
  • Apache FOP options: the "Choose a TTF font and specify its aliases" dialog box picked the localized font family name (e.g. "BIZ UD?? Medium") rather the normal font family name ("BIZ UDMincho Medium"). This bug caused FOP to report a fatal error (e.g. "BIZ-UDMinchoM.ttc: Name does not exist in the TrueType collection: BIZ UD?? Medium") when converting an XML document to PDF.
  • Incompatibilities:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: when converting a DocBook document to any XSL-FO based output format (PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT), the generated file may look different than in previous versions. For example, when generating PDF, the default values of parameters admon.graphics and admon.textlabel are: admon.graphics=1, admon.textlabel=0. In previous versions, the default values of these parameters were: admon.graphics=0, admon.textlabel=1.
  • A Java™ 1.6+ runtime is still sufficient to run the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine, Java Edition. However a Java™ 1.8+ runtime is now required if you need SVG and MathML support.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.1.0 (Jul 6, 2019)

  • Enhancements:
  • ODT output format: due to some limitations of the ODT output format, border and padding attributes were not supported for a fo:inline element. They are now, but only if you use LibreOffice v5+ (does not work with OpenOffice) to open the file created by XMLmind XSL-FO Converter.
  • Improved the behavior of XFC when the font-family property contains a list of several font families (e.g. font-family= "'FF Trixie', 'Andale Mono',monospace"). See "About the font-family property".
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • When converting an (X)HTML file styled using a CSS stylesheet, the media used when loading the CSS rules are now "print" and FO_processor_name (that is, "FOP", "XEP" or "XFC").
  • Upgraded the following components:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.6.
  • This version gives even more control over the numbering of ordered lists. Specifying inheritnum in the outputclass attribute of an ordered list now causes the list item numbering to inherit from outer-level ordered lists. For example, using this feature (e.g. <ol outputclass="upper-alpha inheritnum">), the items of a list nested at level 2 are labelled "1.A.", "1.B.", "1.C.", etc.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 2.3.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.7_01.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.11.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.8.0.15.
  • Bug fixes:
  • ODT output format: alternating lists inheriting the numbering (example: xfc:label-format="%{upper-alpha;inherit})") and lists not inheriting the numbering (example: xfc:label-format="%{lower-alpha})") within the same top level ordered list caused the conversion to fail after reporting an internal error.
  • The online help browser of xslutil displayed a blank window when the computer running xslutil was not connected to the Internet.
  • Incompatibilities:
  • A Java™ 1.6+ runtime is now required to run the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine, Java Edition. A Java™ 1.8+ runtime is now required to run XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server. Both Oracle Java and OpenJDK are now officially supported.
  • File ext/lib/jai_imageio.jar, which added support for the TIFF and PNM image file formats, is not bundled with the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine anymore. If you need XFC to support the TIFF image file format, simple use a Java™ 11+ runtime.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 6.0.0 (Oct 29, 2018)

  • Enhancements:
  • Extension attribute xfc:label-format has now an "inherit" parameter. Example: xfc:label-format="%{lower-alpha;inherit})". Setting the "inherit" parameter specifies that a numbered fo:list-block “inherits” the numbering of its ancestor numbered fo:list-blocks. In other words, this parameter may be used to implement what is often called multi-level numbering (e.g. 1.A.a.)
  • More information in "The xfc:label-format extension attribute".
  • Extension attribute xfc:render-as-table may be used as a quick and easy workaround for one of the most annoying limitations of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter: a fo:block having a border and/or background color and containing several other blocks, lists or tables is very poorly rendered in RTF, WML, DOCX and ODT. (Such container fo:blocks are quite commonly used, for example, to represent complex notes, admonitions or sidebars.)
  • The reason of this limitation is due to the fact that the RTF, WML, DOCX and ODT output formats can —to make it simple— only contain a “flat” sequence of styled paragraphs and tables.
  • The two above extension attributes are showcased in new article "How to adapt your existing XSLT stylesheet to the specificities of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter" (PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT).
  • RTF, WML, DOCX output formats: the empty placeholder paragraph contained in an empty table cell now inherits its font and text color from its ancestors. In previous versions of XFC, this placeholder always used the default font (e.g. Calibri 11pt) and the default text color.
  • Bug fixes:
  • DOCX output format only: a table contained in a list itself contained in a table often had incorrect left and right margins (the left and right padding of first table cell were added to the left and right margins of the table).
  • DOCX output format only: MS-Word failed to load files where a list was the last child of a table cell, when the last item of this list was a nested table.
  • “Bare URLs” specified as in the following example: <fo:external-graphic src=" https://www.acme.com/logo.png "/> were not trimmed before being parsed. (The recommended way to specify an URL being: <fo:external-graphic src="url(https://www.acme.com/logo.png)"/>.)
  • Forgot to document the xfc:restart-numbering extension attribute, which is very useful when using named paragraph styles to create numbered lists.
  • Regressions:
  • The alternative implementation of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine for .NET, leveraging the obsolete Visual J# runtime has been discontinued.
  • Graphical application controlapp which allowed to stop, configure or reconfigure and start or restart both the bundled Jetty Servlet Container and the XMLmind XSL Server WebApp has been discontinued. XMLmind XSL Server is now available only as standard, ready to deploy, xslsrv.war.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.5.0 (Mar 26, 2018)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter, which passed all non-regression tests, is now officially supported on Java™ 9 platforms.
  • Added command-line option -docx.variant=MS-Word_major_version [ strict ]?. Examples: -docx.variant=14, -docx.variant=15strict. (Corresponding option for the .NET version is: /variant.)
  • This option may be used to mark generated DOCX files as being compatible with MS-Word having specified major version. Any major version other than 14 (MS-Word 2010), 15 (MS-Word 2013), 16 (MS-Word 2016) is currently ignored.
  • Moreover suffix "strict" (supported only when MS-Word_major_version >= 15) may be used to generate DOCX files marked as being "Strict Open XML".
  • Unless this option is used, the generated DOCX files are not marked as being compatible with a specific version of MS-Word.
  • Changed the technology used to implement the context-sensitive online help from obsolete JavaHelp to a dedicated, embedded Web browser displaying Web Help.
  • if the Java™ runtime used to run xslutil is older than version 1.8.0_40, the system Web browser rather than the dedicated, embedded Web browser is used to display the Web Help, which is much less convenient for the user.
  • Upgraded the following components in both XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.2.4.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 2.1.2.
  • Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version v1.0.3.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.8.0.8.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Converting a DocBook document with the draft mode turned on relied on downloading http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/images/draft.png. Now XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server use a local copy of this graphics file.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: converting a document whose location is an URL having a fragment identifier (e.g. ending with #foo) caused the conversion to fail with the following error: "Error: net.sf.saxon.trans.XPathException: Base URI {...} contains a fragment identifier".
  • Regressions:
  • In order to make it compatible with Java™ 9, new ext/lib/jai_imageio.jar no longer supports the JPEG 2000 image file format.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.4.6 (Oct 24, 2017)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server can now be used to convert DocBook v5.1 assemblies to PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX and ODT.
  • Upgraded the following components in both XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.2.1.
  • This version of ditac itself includes XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) version 2.0, which supports 2 layouts for the generated Web Help: classic, the default layout and simple, a new layout. If you want to give it a try, set XSLT stylesheet parameter "wh-layout" to "simple".
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.7.0.20.
  • All programs which are part of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter are now officially supported on macOS High Sierra (version 10.13).
  • Bug fixes:
  • WML, DOCX output formats: the amount of space between the text of a paragraph and a visible border of a paragraph may not exceed 31pt. This undocumented limit was not enforced by XFC which caused MS-Word to reset this space to 4pt.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.4.5 (Jul 25, 2017)

  • Enhancements:
  • Upgraded the following components in both XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.1.4.
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.9.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.2.
  • Other changes:
  • Changed "Licensor" from "Pixware SARL" to "XMLmind Software" in all licenses.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.4.0 (Dec 10, 2015)

  • New implementation of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter for .NET:
  • The new implementation no longer requires installing Microsoft Visual J#® 2.0 Redistributable Package on the computer used to run XMLmind XSL-FO Converter for .NET. This new implementation just requires a .NET 4.0+ framework on Windows or Mono 3.8+ on Linux.
  • The old implementation which depends on the Microsoft Visual J# runtime and which works using a .NET 2.0+ framework is still available, but should be discontinued in the future.
  • Other enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and controlapp (desktop application allowing to easily configure and control XMLmind XSL server) now works fine on computers having very high resolution (HiDPI) screens. For example, it now works fine on a Mac having a Retina screen and a Windows computer having an UHD (“4K”) screen. On Windows, all DPI scale factors —100%, 125%, 150%, 200%, etc— are supported.
  • On a Linux computer having a HiDPI screen, HiDPI is not automatically detected. You'll have to to specify the display scaling factor you prefer using a command-line option.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.7.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility is now available as a Mac OS X native .dmg distribution including a private Java 1.8.0_66 runtime.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter is now officially supported on Windows 10 and on Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan).
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine, .NET edition only: some significant whitespace was discarded when parsing the input XSL-FO file.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.3.0 (Aug 6, 2015)

  • Enhancements:
  • It's now possible to add a watermark to the pages generated by XMLmind XSL-FO Converter. This is done the way which is supported by all the other XSL-FO processors, that is, by setting the background-image property of fo:region-body.
  • WML format only: identical images are no longer duplicated in the generated file. This was already the case for the ODT and DOCX formats. This is not yet the case for the RTF format.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine, XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.8.
  • As a consequence, SVG and MathML support in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine now requires using Java 1.6+.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.6.0.6.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.0.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.6.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.17.v20150415.
  • Bug fixes:
  • RTF format only: the backslash character ("\") was rendered as a Yen symbol ("¥") by some versions of MS-Word.
  • Shorthand properties containing values themselves containing whitespace didn't parse correctly. For example, the following shorthand properties didn't parse correctly: font="10pt 'Times New Roman'", border-color="rgb(219, 219, 219)".
  • XMLmind XSL Server: failed to convert uploaded files having non-ASCII characters in their filenames.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.2.0 (Feb 16, 2015)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.4.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.5.1.8.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Named paragraph styles, all output formats: in the following use case
  • Heading 3
  • the empty fo:block used to specify a page break was ignored. That is, the block having named style "Heading 3" was not preceded by a page break.
  • Java™ Edition only: failing to read the resolution from an image file (i.e. because the image metadata is inconsistent or in a form which is not supported by the Java runtime) caused the image not to be rendered at all. Now XFC fallbacks to the default image resolution (96DPI), then XFC proceeds to render such images.
  • HTTP header "Content-Type: image/jpg" was not considered to be equivalent to "Content-Type: image/jpeg". Such HTTP headers are used by XFC when a fo:external-graphic element references a remote graphic file having no file extension and when attribute content-type is not specified.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.1.0 (Sep 18, 2014)

  • Enhancements:
  • DOCX and OTD formats only: duplicate images referenced in the source XSL-FO are now stored once in the DOCX or ODT output file. Not only this reduces the size of the output file, but this also reduces XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) processing time. This feature is especially useful when converting DITA or DocBook documents to DOCX or ODT. Such documents generally make use of a large number of admonition icons (e.g. note.svg, tip.svg, warning.svg).
  • Java version only: by default, SVG graphics are now rasterized at 192DPI. In previous versions of XFC, the resolution used for that was 96DPI. By default, MathML equations are now rasterized at 288DPI. In previous versions of XFC, the resolution used for that was 144DPI.
  • These defaults can be changed by using new properties allowing to parameterize the graphic factories handling SVG graphics and MathML equations. For example, the following properties may be used to restore the defaults used by previous versions of XFC: set.svg.resolution=96, set.mathml.resolution=144.
  • When a fo:external-graphic element references a graphic file having no file extension and when attribute content-type is not specified, XFC now uses the Content-Type header returned by the HTTP server to determine the format of the graphic file.
  • Property genericFontFamilies may be used to map the generic font families (e.g. sans-serif) to actual font families (e.g. Calibri). Font family "Arial Unicode MS" gets now a special treatment:
  • Font family "Arial Unicode MS" is often used to render east asian (CJK) text. However, this typeface has no bold, italic and bold+italic fonts. That's why specifying "sans-serif=Arial Unicode MS" is equivalent to specifying "sans-serif=Arial", except that some special instructions are inserted in the output file to specify that typeface Arial is to be used to render western text and "Arial Unicode MS" is to used to render east asian text.
  • This specificity is supported by the ODT, WML and DOCX output formats, but not by the RTF output format.
  • Java version: added -Djava.awt.headless=true to all the command-line executables, fo2docx, fo2odt, etc, found in XFC_install_dir/bin/.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.3.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.5.1.7.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.16.v20140903.
  • Bug fixes:
  • DOCX only: an empty fo:list-item-label caused the list item to have an incorrect first line indent in the DOCX output file.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 5.0 (Sep 18, 2014)

  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter now allows to generate RTF, WordprocessingML, Office Open XML (.docx) and OpenOffice (.odt) files where most of the text formatting is achieved using named paragraph styles ("Normal", "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc) and named character styles ("Strong", "Emphasis", etc).
  • Moreover, a named paragraph style may reference a named numbering scheme (also known as a “list style”). This allows to implement numbered headings and advanced —multilevel— lists purely by using named paragraph styles.
  • The main benefits of generating named styles are for the end-user of the word processor files:
  • Thanks to the names of the styles, the document, when opened in MS-Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice, looks familiar and its organization is easier to understand.
  • After a change, the numbering of headings and list items is automatically updated by the word processor.
  • The formatting of the document is a snap to modify using the various style editors included in the word processor.
  • Other enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: the font list contained in the FOP and XEP preferences sheets (Options|Preferences, Add-on section, FOP and XEP sub-sections) now supports dropping one or more .ttf (TrueType Font) or .ttc (TrueType Font Collection) files.
  • This change was needed because on Windows, for permissions reasons, there is no way to pick a font file from the "C:\Windows\Fonts\" folder using the standard file chooser (whether the native or the Java™ one). Therefore the only way to register with Apache FOP or RenderX XEP a font found in "C:\Windows\Fonts\" is to drag its file from the Windows file manager and to drop it onto the list.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.1.
  • Bug fixes:
  • .NET edition only: in some cases, some significant whitespace was discarded from the input XSL-FO file. Example -
  • caused XFC .NET Edition to generate a paragraph containing "ABC", the expected value being a paragraph containing "A B C".

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.8.3 (Nov 14, 2013)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.5.0_01.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.14.v20131031.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.8.2 (Aug 2, 2013)

  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: added support for the orphans and widows XSL-FO properties.
  • Remember that Window/Orphan control is turned on by default, as the initial value of the orphans and widows properties is 2.
  • Also note that for MS-Word, Window/Orphan control is an all or nothing option. Therefore if you set attribute orphans or attribute widows to 1, Window and Orphan control will be turned off. If, on the contrary, you set attribute orphans or attribute widows to any value greater or equal than 2, Window and Orphan control will be turned on.
  • Unlike MS-Word, OpenOffice/LibreOffice fully supports the orphans and widows XSL-FO properties.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • · Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.4.2_01. This version allows to control the numbering of ordered lists by the means of the outputclass attribute of the ol element. More information here. This version also allows to generate self-contained Web Help. More information here.
  • · Upgraded the DocBook XSL stylesheets to version 1.78.1.
  • · Upgraded Saxon to version 9.4.0.9.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.12.v20130726.
  • Bug fixes:
  • "keep-together.within-column" was ignored while "keep-together.within-page" was honored. Now these properties are treated exactly the same (which is the fine because XFC targets word processors). Same bug with "keep-with-next and keep-with-previous".
  • Incompatibilities:
  • Running XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server now requires a JavaTM 1.6+ runtime.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.8.1 (Feb 25, 2013)

  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server now allow to convert DITA documents to XHTML5 pages, Web Help containing XHTML5 pages and EPUB3.
  • In order to add support for the new output formats, the following components were upgraded in both XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.4.
  • Upgraded Saxon to version 9.4.0.6.
  • The new output formats all support rich media content. A new chapter of the XMLmind DITA Converter Manual, Rich media content, explains how to add SVG, MathML, audio, video, Flash animations and actions (e.g. click some text to play a sound) to your DITA topics. This chapter also explains how this rich media content is processed depending on whether it is supported by the output format.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.8 (Nov 23, 2012)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine
  • may now be used to rotate the content of a fo:table-cell. More information in "Using fo:block-container to rotate the content of a table cell".
  • Attributes fo:language and fo:country (or equivalently, xml:lang) are now used to add language information to the files created by XMLmind XSL-FO Converter. This information was absent from the files created by the previous releases. This caused the word processor to believe that the document was entirely written in the default language of the application. More information in "Adding language information to the files created by XFC".
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: removed the Preview tab from the Conversion editor and instead, added a handy Preview checkbox to the main window.
  • XMLmind XSL Server: upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.7.v20120910.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.3.1_02.
  • Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 1.1.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter is now officially supported on Windows 8.
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: the Conversion editor/Transform tab/Revert button now works as expected, even when the user-specified custom XSLT file is not found anymore (e.g. the user deleted it).

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.7 (Jul 20, 2012)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL Utility
  • Conversion editor/Transform tab: new Customize button allows to automatically create a customization of the XSLT stylesheet currently selected. New Edit button (next to the Customize button) invokes a specialized editor called XMLmind XSL Customizer. This editor allows to add parameters and attribute sets to the newly created XSLT customization and this, without prior knowledge of XSL.
  • Conversion editor/DITA tab: the Edit button now invokes the helper application associated to the .ditaval extension (typically an XML editor or a text editor).
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • The conversions from DocBook 4 and 5 now use the profiling stylesheets (that is, supporting conditional processing) rather than the plain stylesheets.
  • Upgraded the DocBook XSL stylesheets to version 1.77.1.
  • XMLmind XSL Server
  • Upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.6.4.v20120524.
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: make URI parsing lenient on Windows.
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: fo:external-graphic and fo:instream-foreign-object: when both content-width and content-height attributes were specified, XFC behaved as if scaling="non-uniform" was also specified (which means: scaling need not preserve the aspect ratio). This is incorrect in all cases because the default value of attribute scaling is "uniform" (which means: scaling should preserve the aspect ratio).
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • The XHTML stylesheets were passed parameter foProcessor=XEP when FOP was used to convert an XHTML page to PDF.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.6.1 (Jun 21, 2012)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: made XSL-FO parsing less strict
  • A length other than 0 having no unit (e.g. font-size="12") is now assumed to have an implicit px unit.
  • Unit ex is now supported. For XFC, 2ex = 1em, which is an approximation.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • New XSLT 2 stylesheets allow to convert XHTML 1.0, 1.1 and 5.0 documents to PostScript, PDF, RTF, WordprocessingML, Office Open XML (.docx) and OpenOffice (.odt).
  • These XSLT 2 stylesheets support a large number of parameters. They make an extensive use of xsl:attribute-sets. Last but not least, by default, CSS styles specified in XHTML style attributes, style and link elements also apply to the XSL-FO file generated by these XSLT 2 stylesheets.
  • Note that the XSLT 2 stylesheets for XHTML 1.0, 1.1 and 5.0 developed by XMLmind are open source software licensed under the terms of the MIT license. This means that you may freely use these resources outside XMLmind products. More information in XHTML 5 Resources.
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.2.
  • XMLmind XSL Server
  • Upgraded tagsoup to version 1.2.1.
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine: specifying an unknown named color (e.g. color="foobar") sometimes caused XFC to raise a NullPointerException when converting XSL-FO to RTF or to OpenDocument (.odt).
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: the parameter editor dialog box did not allow to specify a parameter value starting or ending with whitespace (e.g. page-ref-before = " on page ").

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.6.0 (Jan 11, 2012)

  • Enhancements:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine
  • New extension attribute xfc:outline-level may be used to mark a fo:block as a heading having the outline level specified by the value of the attribute. The value of this attribute is an integer between 1 and 9 inclusive. Any other value will cause attribute xfc:outline-level to be ignored
  • Specifying outline levels allows to
  • Use the Document Map and the Outline View in MS-Word. Use the Navigator Window in OpenOffice/LibreOffice
  • Insert a Table of Contents in a document edited in MS-Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice
  • A JPEG image file referenced by the source XSL-FO is now kept in JPEG format in the output file. In the previous releases, such images were systematically transcoded to PNG, which lead to large .rtf, .wml, .docx or .odt files in certain cases
  • If, for any reason, you prefer to keep transcoding JPEG image files to PNG, then specify command-line option -alwaysSaveAsPNG=true (Java) or /png (.NET)
  • Added jai_imageio.jar to ext/lib/. In consequence, when xfc_ext.jar is in the CLASSPATH of the host application, this allows XFC to support the following additional image file formats: TIFF, JPEG 2000 and PNM
  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server
  • Now allow to convert DITA documents to Web Help. Web Help example: XMLmind DITA Converter Manual
  • Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.1.0_01
  • XMLmind XSL Utility
  • Added a "Browse Files" button to the dialog box allowing to add or edit an XSLT stylesheet parameter
  • XMLmind XSL Server
  • Added the following server parameters: maxRequestSize (default value: 20Mb), maxFileSize (default value: 10Mb), fileSizeThreshold (default value: 16384b). These parameters allows to configure the support of "multipart/form-data" requests. In the previous releases, the corresponding values were hardwired in the code and also way too small (2Mb, 1Mb, 16384b)
  • Upgraded the bundled Jetty 7 to version 7.5.4.v20111024
  • Bug fixes:
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter engine
  • RTF output only: a table cell containing just an empty block inherited the wrong font size and thus, often caused the overall height of its container row to be too large
  • Specifying attribute content-type="content-type:image/jpg" on a fo:external-graphic element caused XFC to ignore the JPEG image and to report a "'image/jpg', unsupported graphic format" warning. Now "image/jpg" is considered to be an alias for "image/jpeg"
  • XMLmind XSL-FO Converter for .NET now works with .NET 4+. It does so by automatically invoking XmlMind.FoConverter.FixDotNET4.DoIt. Therefore, in principle, there is nothing special to do in the client code
  • In the unlikely case where automatically invoking FixDotNET4.DoIt poses some problems, please do not hesitate to ask for an xfc.dll which does not contain this workaround (based on P/Invoke)

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.5.0.01 (Jan 11, 2012)

  • XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server have been patched in order to integrate XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac) v2.0.4. This release of ditac contains a number of bug fixes.

New in XMLmind XSL-FO Converter 4.5 (Jan 11, 2012)

  • Enhancements:
  • OOXML (.docx): images are now represented by DrawingML elements. Previously, images were represented by VML —deprecated— elements. This makes the images nicer to edit in Word 2007+ and this also fixes a bug on the Mac (see below).
  • This feature has been tested using the Word application contained in the following Microsoft Office releases: Office 2003 + Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2011 Mac.
  • Microsoft Office Word 2007 minor bug
  • Microsoft Office Word 2007 has a minor bug in its handling of DrawingML. You are unlikely to encounter this minor bug. However, in order to fix it, you may have to install:
  • o The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2). Service Pack 2 provides the latest updates to the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite. This update also applies to Microsoft Office Project, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, Microsoft Expression Web, Microsoft Office Visio, and Visual Web Developer.
  • o Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB974561). Microsoft has released an update for Microsoft Office Word 2007. This update provides the latest fixes to Microsoft Office Word 2007. Additionally, this update contains stability and performance improvements.
  • Doing this brings Word 2007 to SP2 MSO 12.0.6554.5001.
  • XFC compatiblity mode
  • Generating VML is still possible by setting the docx.useVML property of com.xmlmind.fo.converter.Driver or Converter to "true". The corresponding command-line option of fo2docx.bat is -docx.useVML=true.
  • When using the .NET edition of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter, set the UseVML property of UseXmlMind.FoConverter.Converter to true. The corresponding command-line option of fo2docx.exe is /vml.
  • Added support for the following XSL-FO 1.1 property values: scale-down-to-fit, scale-up-to-fit. These are values of properties content-width and content-height. Such properties apply to fo:external-graphic and fo:instream-foreign-object.
  • XFC automatically tries to infer the numbering style from the label of the first list item. When the heuristics used by XFC are insufficient to infer the type of a list, it's now possible to explicitly specify this type by adding an xfc:label-format proprietary attribute to the fo:list-block.
  • The syntax of this attribute is:
  • label-format -> [ bullet | number ]?
  • bullet -> String
  • number -> [String]? '%{' format '}' [String]
  • format -> 'decimal'|'lower-alpha'|'upper-alpha'|
  • lower-roman'|'upper-roman' [start]?
  • start -> ';start=' Positive_Integer
  • Examples: xfc:label-format="", xfc:label-format="→", xfc:label-format="%{lower-alpha;start=3}.", xfc:label-format="-%{decimal}-".
  • Upgraded the following components in both XMLmind XSL Utility and XMLmind XSL Server:
  • o Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 2.0.2.
  • o Upgraded Saxon to version 9.3.0.5.
  • Bug fixes:
  • OOXML (.docx): images were not displayed at all by the Word application contained in Office 2008 Mac and Office 2011 Mac. Replacing VML by DrawingML —see above— fixed this problem.
  • RTF, WML, OOXML (.docx): a border having a "double" style was twice as thick as it should be.
  • The automatic layout of very wide tables was very poor.
  • XMLmind XSL Utility: all stock conversion specifications now pass parameter VALIDATE=false to the RenderX XEP XSL-FO Processor. This is a workaround for XEP bug "renderx #22766". This bug is described in http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/known_problems.html#platform_independent.