Flexible XML Document View and Profiling
Serna WYSIWYG XML editor employs XSLT/XSL-FO to render XML documents in print-like appearance. This approach not only facilitates the authoring process, but also isolates authors from the complexities of the underlying XML technology. Flexible rendering and document view profiling features ease the work of authors who deal with complex XML documents.
Serna XML editor employs the world's only cross-platform C++ implementation of document rendering with the help of XSLT and XSL-FO.
Almost complete support of the XSLT standard and support of most XSL-FO instructions allow the use of ready-made stylesheets for XML document publishing in Serna XML editor with minimal changes. For example, to render XML Docbook documents, a slightly modified Norman Walsh's stylesheet for PDF publishing of Docbook XML is applied.
XSLT Support
Serna XML editor employs the XSLT language to transform a document being edited into the XSL-FO format for further rendering on the screen. This happens on the fly, unnoticed by the user, but you can't overestimate the abilities of this approach.
The XSLT language allows you to transform XML documents in different ways, automatically generate localized content according to particular rules (e.g. hints for technical writers), expand or collapse some part of the content, and many other things. Serna XML editor fully supports XSLT 1.0 and XSLT 1.1, except for xsl:key, xsl:number with count-level ANY, and xsl:output.
In Serna XML editor, you can change the values of top-level XSLT stylesheet parameters and switch between parameter sets while editing an XML document. For example, it is possible to change the font size or switch the draft mode on and off for Docbook XML documents.
XSL-FO Support
The XSL-FO language is traditionally used together with the XSLT language to convert XML to PDF. In Serna, the XSL-FO language is applied to render XML documents during the editing process. Thanks to this, XML documents are rendered in a style that is very close to the published output.
Serna XSL-FO formatter supports most of Basic Conformance FOs and properties, plus some from Extended and Complete Conformance such as lists and tables, and some composite properties. CALS, XSL-FO and HTML model tables are supported. See Syntext Serna XML Editor Developer's Guide for more information.
