"We have been using Serna XML for the last two years with increased productivity for publishing large, cross-referenced mixed-content documentation for railway signalling system. The WYSIWYG for docbook feature is a must-have."

Stanislas Pinte, Sales Director, ERTMS Solutions, Belgium

"We went ahead and bought Serna yesterday, having decided that it does a good job of providing both a stable authoring and production environment, and the cost seemed right."

Summer Long, Senior Writer- Product Documentation, Event Zero, Australia

"When our organisation adopted XML for a long-term historical dictionary project and a large supporting quotations database, we needed an XML editor that would cater for users with limited curiosity about XML syntax. Over three months I trialled XML editors extensively, including all the big names. With Serna I was daunted at first by the requirement to learn XSLT/XSL-FO to present our custom XML data graphically but, after learning the basics, the benefits of XSLT/XSL-FO rendering became obvious. This single, forward-looking design feature put Serna ahead of the pack for me.

Serna also supports two XSL extensions which made it trivial to build form support into the display, reducing errors and training time dramatically. Trainee database inputters can start work on our most complex records within hours. They never see the XML source, and understand nothing about XML syntax. All they need to know is where to click to insert or modify content. Due to this simplicity we now often model small project-specific task-sets with quick DTDs and control the workflow through Serna, generating live reports dynamically on simple web pages.

Another plus was the Python/C++ API support, which we plan to use for more direct database integration than we have now, but this sort of development effort is not required to use Serna. You do not even need to know XSLT/XSL-FO when you use a standard XML vocabulary for which Serna has existing stylesheets, such as DITA, Docbook or TEI.

Aside from the affordable pricing, positive feedback from our users and good support from Syntext, Serna made our transition to XML painless for users. It also looks like it will meet other specific longer-term goals in a way that I do not expect other XML-authoring products to do soon."

Tim van Niekerk, Editor - Systems Developer, Dictionary Unit for South African English, South Africa