Overview

AH Formatter V5.0 is a software to format XML/HTML documents and output them to paged media such as PDF, XPS and paper. It now supports page layouts specified using either XSL-FO (ExtensibleStylesheet Language - Formatting Objects) and CSS (Cascading StyleSheets) including CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets Level3) which is under development by W3C.

The following six products are prepared according to the formatting capability of AH Formatter V5.0

• AH Formatter V5.0

  XSL-FO formatting, HTML formatting using CSS are available. As long as there is no notice especially in this document, when it is called AH Formatter V5.0, it is a generic term of six types of all products in many cases, but it may point an individual product guessing from the context.

• AH XSL Formatter V5.0

  XSL-FO formatting is available. HTML formatting using CSS is not available.

• AH CSS Formatter V5.0

  HTML formatting using CSS is available. XSL-FO formatting is not available.

• AH Formatter V5.0 Lite

  This is a function limited version of AH Formatter V5.0. Please refer to About AH Formatter V5.0 Lite . As long as there is no notice especially in this document, when it is called AH Formatter V5.0 Lite, it is a generic term including AH XSL Formatter V5.0 Lite and AH CSS Formatter V5.0 Lite.

• AH XSL Formatter V5.0 Lite

  This is a function limited version of AH XSL Formatter V5.0. Please refer to About AH Formatter V5.0 Lite

• AH CSS Formatter V5.0 Lite

  This is a function limited version of AH CSS Formatter V5.0. Please refer to About AH Formatter V5.0 Lite

AH Formatter V5.0 provides the following features:

• Compliant with CSS

  AH Formatter V5.0 supports CSS2.1 and CSS3. Page models of CSS3 is also supported, now that high-quality page formatting will be available. Please refer to "CSS Conformance" for detail. HTML/XHTML formatting is also availalbe except for flames, etc., in HTML. Please refer to "Formatting HTML".

• Passes Acid2

  AH Formatter V5.0 has passed the Acid2 test published by "The Web Standards Project (WaSP)" that measures the conforming level to CSS.

• Compliant with XSL 1.1

  Corresponds to XSL 1.1 which is a XSL-FO specification. AH Formatter V5.0 faithfully implements quite almost elements of the XSL specification and properties. Please refer to "XSL-FO 1.1 Conformance".

• Format virtually any size document

  AH Formatter V5.0 can now format a document of virtually any size whether it is a publication, tens of thousands of invoices, reports, technical manuals, or personalized one to one documents. Please refer to "Formatting Large Document".

• High speed formatting

  AH Formatter V5.0 processes the formatting at high speed, and generates PDF. It is the best suited for applying to the Web application such as the PDF delivery on Web etc.

• Multilingual language

  AH Formatter V5.0 supports over 50 different languages, almost any language which is supported by Unicode including. It offers the abilities to write in vertical mode, to run the text from right to left as in Arabic and Hebrew and also to create multilingual documents with language mixtures on the same page and even on the same line. It also offers the hyphenation processing, and the adjustment of white space before and behind the punctuation which differs according to the language. Moreover, AH Formatter V5.0 makes it possible to hyphenate more than 40 languages.

• Outputs to the various file format

  PDF output can be done for an unlimited number of users on a server by utilizing the Antenna House developed PDF direct creation engine. The license of Acrobat is unnecessary. AH Formatter PostScript Output Option, INX Output Option, XPS Output Option and SVG Output Option make PostScript^® output, INX output, XPS output and SVG output available.

• Supports PDF/X and PDF/A

  AH Formatter V5.0 supports PDF/X. PDF/X is a specification that places much value on exchanging date and defined by ISO for printing purpose. PDF/A is also supported. PDF/A is a format for long-term preservation of an electronic document and it is also defined by ISO.

• Accessible PDF

  AH Formatter V5.0 can generate the Tagged PDF for enhancing the accessibility to people with disabilities. This is a function indispensable to comply with Section 508, the law of the United States enforced on June 21, 2001.

• Direct Printer output

  The Windows version also supports the ability to send the converted results directly to any Windows based printer without the need to first create a PDF document. It's also possible to get the formatted result and print it immediately by using GUI.

• Native drawing of vector Graphics

  With AH Formatter V5.0 SVG, MathML, EMF, WMF and CGM image is drawn into PDF as vector thus retaining the quality of output images. AH Formatter CGM Option is required for drawing CGM as vector graphic.

• Supports the embedding of PDF into PDF

  An arbitrary page of other PDF can be embedded into PDF. It is possible to convert EPS into PDF and embed into PDF using this function. In the environment where Adobe Distiller and Ghostscript are installed, it can be performed automatically.

• Supports PANTONE^® color

  The color name of PANTONE^® can be directly specified by using AH Formatter PANTONE^® Option.

• Wide array of Integration Interface

  As integration interface AH Formatter V5.0 provides Command-line, .NET, COM, Java and C/C++ interface. (.NET and COM interfaces are available only for Windows.) All interfaces support streaming input/output which makes for the easy system integration. Also the output of the native parser of .NET (XML and XSLT output) can be directly received without going through a file. It is possible to receive DOM directly and process it with not only .NET interface but also COM interface.

AH Formatter V5.0 formats XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO), XML with XSL stylesheet, or HTML with CSS stylesheet. The formatted result will be displayed in GUI and outputted or printed to PDF. (Display and printing are availalbe only with the Windows version). The work flow is as shown below.

• When an (X) HTML document is inputted, AH Formatter V5 formats it immediately using a default HTML stylesheet.
• When an XML document or a (X) HTML document with a CSS stylesheet are inputted, AH Formatter V5 formats it immediately.
• When an XSL Formatting Object is inputted, AH Formatter V5.0 formats it immediately.
• When an XML document and an XSL stylesheet are inputted, AH Formatter V5.0 transforms them to XSL Formatting Object using XSLT processor and formats the XSL Formatting Object.
• When an XML document and the Project file of XSL Report Designer are both inputted, AH Formatter V5.0 transforms it into XSL Formatting Objects using XSL Report Designer.

Please find a list of implemented XSL-FO and properties in "XSL-FO 1.1 Conformance" As for CSS, please refere to "CSS Conformance".

New Enhancements of AH Formatter V5.0 from XSL Formatter V4 are as follows:

• In addition to the XSL-FO formatting, HTML and XML with CSS stylesheet specification are newly available. There are some restrictions depending on the products. Please refer to Overview.
• It's possible to select the text on the WYSIWYG window and copy it into a clipboard.
• An Internet shortcut (.url) file, URL character strings or a shortcut link (.lnk) to a file can be dropped and opened in the WYSIWYG window.
• Enables to output the formatted results to plain text format with specifying the encode, CR/LF code by GUI.
• The following elements are newly added.
  • <axf:font-face> no-LT
• The following properties are newly added or extended.
  • axf:alt-glyph
  • axf:background-image-resolution
  • axf:document-info
  • axf:hanging-punctuation
  • axf:image-resolution
  • axf:punctuation-trim
  • axf:text-align-string
  • axf:text-justify-trim
  • axf:text-replace
  • axf:number-transform no-LT
  • axf:word-wrap
  • axf:kansuji-style no-LT
  • axf:kansuji-letter no-LT
  • axf:kansuji-grouping-letter no-LT
• Values for the following property are extended.
  • text-transform no-LT
• The following unit can be used in addition to the unit which can be used by the XSL specification.
  • jpt
  • q
  • dpi
• Restrictions by AH Formatter V5.0 Lite was reduced considerably. ☞ About AH Formatter V5.0 Lite

• All but "x64 edition" and the "64-bit version" are compiled with 32 bit.
• Hereinafter unless otherwise explicitly mentioned, the phrase "Windows version" includes both Windows version and Windows x64 version.
• Hereinafter unless otherwise explicitly mentioned, the phrase "Linux version" includes both Linux version and Linux 64bit version.
• Please see "Font Setting" for supported fonts. In addition, fonts are not included in the Windows version.
• Standard 14 fonts in non-Windows version have the metrics information file only. They do not contain the file of the outline information. If you want to embed these fonts to PDF or PS file, please buy whole fonts by yourself.
• Please confirm the necessary environment variables at "Environment Variable" in this manual.
• Please confirm the installed modules at "Installed Modules" in this manual.
• The printing function on the Windows version depends on Windows-based printer drivers.
• Optional PDF Digital Signature Module can be used with Windows version, but it cannot be used with Windows x64 version.

AH Formatter V5.0 supports languages expressed with the following scripts among the scripts specified by ISO 15924.

• Latn : Latin
• Grek : Greek
• Cyrl : Cyrillic
• Arab : Arabic
• Hebr : Hebrew
• Deva : Devanagari
• Thai : Thai
• Kana : Katakana
• Hira : Hiragana
• Hang : Hangul
• Hani : Han (Kanji)
• Hans : Han (Chinese Simplified)
• Hant : Han (Chinese Traditional)
• Jpan : Japanese (Han+Hira+Kana)

Depending on the language, it's possible to hyphenate the Latin script, the Greek script and the Cyrille script.

Some of the language codes which is defined by ISO 639-2 can be specified. The main codes are as follows. The corresponding scripts show the major example.

code		language	script	hyphenation
af	afr	Afrikaans	Latn	yes
ar	ara	Arabic	Arab	n/a
az	aze	Azerbaijani	Latn	no
bg	bul	Bulgarian	Cyrl	yes
ca	cat	Catalan	Latn	yes
cs	ces	Czech	Latn	yes
cy	cym	Welsh	Latn	yes
da	dan	Danish	Latn	yes
de	deu	German / Swiss German	Latn	yes
el	ell	Greek	Grek	yes
en	eng	English	Latn	yes
en-US	eng-US	American	Latn	yes
eo	epo	Esperanto	Latn	yes
es	spa	Spanish	Latn	yes
et	est	Estonian	Latn	yes
eu	eus	Basque	Latn	yes
fa	fas	Persian	Arab	n/a
fi	fin	Finnish	Latn	yes
fr	fra	French / Canadian French	Latn	yes
ga	gle	Irish (Erse or Gaelic)	Latn	yes
he	heb	Hebrew	Hebr	n/a
hi	hin	Hindi	Deva	n/a
hr	hrv	Croatian	Cyrl / Latn	yes
hu	hun	Hungarian	Latn	yes
id	ind	Indonesian	Latn	yes
is	isl	Icelandic	Latn	yes
it	ita	Italian	Latn	yes
ja	jpn	Japanese	Hani, Hira, Kana, Jpan	n/a
kk	kaz	Kazakh	Cyrl / Latn	no
ko	kor	Korean	Hang, Hani	n/a
la	lat	Latin	Latn	yes
lt	lit	Lithuanian	Latn	yes
lv	lav	Latvian	Latn	yes
ms	msa	Bahasa Malay	Latn	yes
mt	mlt	Maltese	Latn	yes
nl	nld	Dutch / Flemish	Latn	yes
no	nor	Norwegian	Latn	yes
pl	pol	Polish	Latn	yes
pt	por	Portuguese / Brazilian	Latn	yes
ro	ron	Romanian / Moldavian	Latn	yes
ru	rus	Russian	Cyrl	yes
sk	slk	Slovak	Latn	yes
sl	slv	Slovenian	Latn	yes
sr	srp	Serbian	Cyrl / Latn	yes
sv	swe	Swedish	Latn	yes
sw	swa	Swahili	Latn	yes
th	tha	Thai	Thai	yes
tr	tur	Turkish	Latn	yes
uk	ukr	Ukrainian	Cyrl	yes
ur	urd	Urdu	Latn	no
vi	vie	Vietnamese	Latn	no
zh-CN	zho-CN	Chinese	Hani, Hans	n/a
zh-TW	zho-TW	Chinese (Taiwanese)	Hani, Hant	n/a

AH Formatter V5.0 supports the following HTML, CSS or FO Encodings. These are a part of CHARACTER SETS of IANA.

• UTF-8
• UTF-16
• UTF-32
• ISO-10646-UCS-2
• ISO-10646-UCS-4
• ANSI_X3.4
• ISO_646.irv
• ISO646-US
• US-ASCII
• ISO_8859-1
• latin1

• Windows-31J
• Shift_JIS
• EUC-JP
• ISO-2022-JP
• GB18030
• GBK
• GB2312
• Big5
• KS_C_5601-1987
• iso-ir-149
• korean

Windows-31J is regarded as Shift_JIS.

Regarding the XML document and the XSL stylesheet, it depends on the XSLT processor to be used.

AH Formatter V5.0 uses an XSLT processor for converting XML documents and XSL stylesheets into XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO). In the Windows version, either MSXML4 or MSXML3 is used as the standard XSLT processor. Windows users have the option to use a different XSLT processor if desired. In non-Windows version users set their desired XSLT processor through the "Environment Variable" or "Option Setting File". For Windows XP, Internet Explore 6 or later MSXML3 is already installed. There is no need for the user to separately install MSXML3.

AH Formatter V5.0 Lite is a popular version of AH Formatter V5.0, it limits some of the professional functions of V5.0 (hereafter Standard) and is a lower-cost alternative to V5.0 Standard. V5.0 Lite is suitable for customers who don't need advanced handling of PDF, formatting of a great deal of pages, etc. But it's still full of many other attractive functions.

• Total page number of the formatted pages are limited to 300 per 1 document. The watermark that shows the limited version is displayed and the URL of our Website is displayed at the bottom of the pages which exceed 300.
• PDF/X, PDF/A and Tagged PDF are not supported.
• Cannot linearize PDF for Fast Web View.
• Cannot use the PDF Digital Signature Module.
• Cannot perform 2-pass format.
• Cannot save and load the area tree.
• Cannot output TEXT.
• Cannot format by setting the Project file of Antenna House XSL Report Designer.
• MathML drawing is not supported. In order to use the function of MathML, you will have to purchase the AH Formatter MathML Option separately.
• The following extensions are not supported. (When there is no specification written, they are common for XSL extension and CSS extension.）
  • Printer marks such as a crop mark
  • Dynamic addition of a font
  • Bookmarks (If a bookmark is basic, it's available.）
  • PDF Forms
  • PDF annotation
  • Specify the page number of the link destination
  • PDF output in multi separate volume
  • Line continued marks
  • Line numbers
  • Foot note numbers
  • Printer control
  • Leader expansion
  • Repeat page sequence
  • Suppress a block on the first page
  • Character string conversion such as Japanese numerals.
• Lite doesn't include 90 day warranty. Customers may purchase an annual maintenance agreement to get the customer service.

FYI: no-LT sign is applied to the restricted items or described as restriction in this Online Manual.

AH Formatter V5.0 Evaluation version has the following restrictions as compared to the product version.

• The URL of Antenna House website is shown at the bottom of all pages.
• The watermark image, "Evaluation Version", is placed on each page.
• The weight of the font may look changed a little and the color of the image may look different a little with the watermark. There is cause in Adobe Acrobat or Reader for this problem. In addition, the printing speed decreases for the amount of the watermark.
• PDF1.3 cannot be output with the evaluation version. PDF 1.4 is output.
• Impossible to input/output the Area Tree.
• When the PDF Digital Signature Module is installed, this module works as an evaluation version. However the Digital Signature cannot be used with AH Formatter V5.0 Lite.
• The function of PostScript output is effective. PostScript output has the following restrictions.
  • Only the first one page can be outputted.
  This function with the product version is provided as an option. In order to use this function with the product version, customers must purchase the AH Formatter Postscript Output Option separately.
• The function of SVG output is effective. SVG output has the following restrictions.
  • Only the first one page can be outputted.
  • Font embedding is not available.
  The SVG output function in the product version is provided as an option. In order to use this function in the product version, customers must purchase AH Formatter SVG Output Option separately.
• The function of INX output is effective. INX output has the following restrictions.
  • Only the first one page can be outputted.
  The INX output function in the product version is provided as an option. In order to use this function in the product version, customers must purchase AH Formatter INX Output Option separately.
• The function of XPS output is effective. XPS output has the following restrictions.
  • Only the first one page can be outputted.
  The XPS output function in the product version is provided as an option. In order to use this function in the product version, customers must purchase AH Formatter XPS Output Option separately.
• The function of CGM drawing by utilizing our direct creation module is effective. This function in the product version is provided as an option. In order to use this function with the product version, customers must purchase AH Formatter CGM Option separately.
• The evaluation copy expires after 90 days.
• Use of the evaluation version for an live production or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited.
• It is forbidden to not display intentionally the guide of our Web site under the page, or the watermark indicating the evaluation version.

There are no restrictions on formatting functions except for the above mentioned. However, the optional features that are not explicitly stated above are invalid.

For further information, please refer to Q&A Page on our web site.

• XSL Formatter Q&A

Antenna House provides numerous XSL-FO samples for testing and learning purpose. Please see:

• Stylesheet Tutorial, Sample Files of Formatting Objects and Sample Stylesheets

For more information, technical support and service needs, please contact us by e-mail.

• info@antennahouse.com

The following information is necessary for the mail to our support. Please cooperate with us to do your support smoothly.

• Version of AH Formatter
• License information (Serial No., Company name, Section and User name)
• OS environment

If you are a user of the evaluation version, please enter "evaluation version" for the serial number. In the Windows product version, you can put the required information for support to the mail text automatically by using [Help]-[Mail to Support] on the menu bar in GUI.