[ANN] Consodoc 1.0.0, XML to beautiful documents

[Oleg Paraschenko]

Hi all,

I've just released Consodoc 1.0.0, a new tool for XML to PDF
publishing, and now I'm looking for early adopters. You ought to be one
of them if you are agree with the following statement:

Automatically generated documentation isn't necessary ugly.
The only excuse is the current state of the art with tools that suck.

Consodoc is probably the only publishing tool that concentrates on the
beauty of the result.

Consodoc publishing server: XML to beautiful documents
http://consodoc.com/

* XML is converted to PDF through TeXML and LaTeX.
* It's possible to manually tune the generated layout.
* Tunings are remembered and re-applied during re-generations.

Visit the Consodoc home page to download the software, read the User's
Guide, learn the benefits and suggested workflow:

http://consodoc.com/

Consodoc is free for open source projects, and is payware for business.
Hint: the end of the year is near, the rest of IT budgets should be
spend somehow. Consodoc is a good opportinuty. Purchase it.

Regards, Oleg Parashchenko

 

[Tim Arnold]

Hi all,

I've just released Consodoc 1.0.0, a new tool for XML to PDF
publishing, and now I'm looking for early adopters.

Hi, this looks really interesting and I'd like to learn more.
Can you compare the pros/cons with tbook and jadetex?

thanks,
--Tim Arnold

 

[Oleg Paraschenko]

Hi Tim,

thanks for asking. It's hard to compare Consodoc with tbook or jadetex,
they are different things. Consodoc is a framework which unites several
technologies to the whole.

Being a framework, it automates the gory details, but you still need to
write some code. It's the main and I hope the only cons. More
precisely, you need to write:

* an XSLT program to convert XML to LaTeX, and
* (optionally) a LaTeX class file.

On the pros side: Thanks to TeXML, you need only the basics of XSLT to
rewrite XML tags to LaTeX environments. And writing a class file is an
easy task for an experienced LaTeX developer.

For more pros, see the column "Benefits": http://consodoc.com/

Now let's try to compare the tools.

tbook:

* Source XML should be in the gives DTD, but the program for converting
XML to LaTeX already exists.
* Consodoc doesn't restrict the format of the source XML, but you have
to write a conversion program.

jadetex:

* A Jade program should be written by you. The same is for the
conversion program in Consodoc.
* The TeX code, produced by Jade, isn't for a human.
* In Consodoc, the intermediate LaTeX code is actually a first-class
citizen. Consodoc encourages manual tuning of the LaTeX code to produce
beautiful PDFs.

Don't hesitate to ask further questions!