How it works

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See also RTF in MS-Word 2000, WML in MS-Word 2003, Open XML in MS-Word 2007, OpenDocument in OpenOffice.org.

Converting an XML source to some output format has become a common need in Web Applications and is usually a two-step process:

1. Convert the XML source [example] to an XSL-FO representation [example].
2. Convert the XSL-FO representation to the target format.

Step #1 is usually achieved by applying an XSLT stylesheet [example] to the XML source. Alternatively the XSL-FO representation may be generated directly by some dedicated conversion program.

Step #2 involves an XSL-FO processor for the target format. Many XSL-FO processors already exist for print formats such as PostScript and PDF [example, produced by RenderX XEP], but there is still a need for other formats such as RTF [example], WML [example], Open XML [example] or OpenDocument [example]. This is where XMLmind XSL-FO Converter comes into play.

Many applications already make use of the XSL-FO technology to convert XML data to PostScript® or PDF. By using XMLmind XSL-FO Converter one can easily have such applications support additional output formats, since usually the existing XSLT stylesheet will need no or only minor changes for use with XMLmind XSL-FO Converter.