XSLfast 5.0 is coming soon, what's new?

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 15/12/2011 14:08:16

Usability: massive changes

First, we made really big changes in user interface.

The most important are:

new fancy skin and more classic look: tabs, refined tool bars and menus
new smart guides. Once you dragging / resizing, you see how close it to other elements, where it bordered / aligned
support of multiple monitors. Now you able to move tree / inspector / preview / page sequences navigator to 2nd monitor and leave editing place at main one
preview on the fly. You changing layout and you see (in preview window) how your layout really looks
completions in editor windows. Start typing text or XPath expression and click ctrl+space to see what's near
new layout preview: no more Acrobat Reader necessary
external tools are gone: now XSLfast able to detect everything automatically
filters / groupings are user friendly: hinting depending on attached XML file, most reasonable groupings / filters are available just from context menus
you can fill table contents from one open editor dialog, by navigating arrows at right-bottom corner
new and completely refined table wizard: much more easy
welcome Office 2007/2010 look and feel: ribbons as an alternate look

and more and more, beginning from frames' placement and ending with drag and drop from Finder/ Explorer / Dolphin.

New functions

Of course, we adding new and new features, and our integration with XEP and AHFormatter allows to use customized extensions from both products in UI. But not only this. The major new features are:

now you can use your templates as functions in your XSL code, XSLfast will wrap variables around calls automatically
side floats
massive enhancements for pivot tables
XSL-FO documents are more strict and conforms to XEP validation
links can be not only textual but images too
more IF clauses, for table columns in particular
added way to compare layout versions with user friendly difference report
added support of fo:marker
more robust support of DTD external entities and references
managed backgrounds: IF clauses even for images and colors

and more.

The public betas ain't available right now but will do soon.

I'm very exited by this, esp. the built in preview function. (since it's dang impossible to get todays implementation to work on OSX)

When can we expect it?

Any betas available?

Sincerely,
Janne

Was wondering if there was any update as to when we could expect the lastest release?

We're almost there; the few important bugs stops us to release.