1. Overview

[Important]About Evaluation Edition

Do not be surprised because XMLmind XSL Utility Evaluation Edition generates output containing random duplicate letters. Of course, this does not happen with Professional Edition!

XMLmind XSL Utility is a graphical application (see screenshot) written in Java™ integrating two XSLT engines:

and three XSL-FO processors:

Out of the box, it allows to convert DocBook 4.x, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.2 including assemblies and XHTML documents to PDF, RTF (can be opened in Word 2000+), WordprocessingML (can be opened in Word 2003+), Office Open XML (.docx, can be opened in Word 2007+) and OpenOffice (.odt, can be opened in OpenOffice/LibreOffice 2+) formats. DITA 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 documents can be converted to even more formats: XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, XHTML 5, Web Help, Java™ Help, HTML Help, Eclipse Help, EPUB 2, EPUB 3, PDF, RTF , WordprocessingML, Office Open XML, OpenDocument.

A dialog box allows to modify the specifications of existing conversions (example: change the paper.type parameter of the XSLT stylesheet from A4 to USletter) or to add more conversion specifications (example 1: convert DocBook 4 to PostScript® using FOP; example 2: convert TEI to PDF using PassiveTeX).

This dialog box also allows to specify the command (Windows example: start "" "%O") which is to be used to preview the result of the conversion.

A conversion is basically a two-step process[1]:

  1. Transform the XML input document using the XSLT engine.

  2. Process the temporary files created by first step to generate the desired output format.

Because step #1 is optional, you may use XMLmind XSL Utility to transform XSL-FO files (generated by your external tool chain) to PDF, PostScript®, RTF, WordprocessingML, Office Open XML and OpenOffice formats.

Because step #2 is optional, you may use XMLmind XSL Utility to transform your XML documents to formats such as HTML or Eclipse Help.

Because step #2 can be performed using an external command (HTML Help example: hhc.exe) rather than an XSL-FO processor, you may use XMLmind XSL Utility to transform your XML documents to formats such as HTML Help (.chm) or Java™ Help (.jar). Appendix D, Using XMLmind XSL Utility to convert a DocBook 4 document to HTML Help (.chm file) explains how to do this by taking the HTML Help format (.chm) as an example.

[Note]About the integration of RenderX XEP in XMLmind XSL Utility

Unlike XMLmind XSL-FO Converter and Apache FOP, RenderX XEP is just pre-installed in XMLmind XSL Utility.

The first time you'll try to use this commercial XSL-FO processor, XMLmind XSL Utility will prompt you for the directory where you have installed the RenderX product. This directory must contain RenderX XEP (xep, xep.xml, lib/xep.jar, etc) as well as a valid licence file (license.xml).

If you didn't purchase RenderX XEP and wants to give it a try (highly recommended), close the dialog box allowing to finish the installation of XEP in XMLmind XSL Utility, quit XMLmind XSL Utility, then download and install RenderX XEP Trial Edition or RenderX XEP Personal Edition (free to use under certain conditions).



[1] Conversion of DITA documents works differently.