[xep-support] DiType-based web services

[Kevin Brown]

Steve,

Over the next month we'll be testing the current DITA OT style sheets and
making changes as necessary to give back to the community. We actually hope
(and encourage) our user community to do some of the testing. Download and
give it a try with your FOs, let us know problem areas within your DITA and
Docbook installations we should focus on. 

DiType is currently a little more strict about following the FO
Specification so we'll clean up any issues that exist and possibly add some
new features to the style sheets. XEP works fine as far at the PDF2 plug-in
goes as that was the way it was designed.

DiType was designed was to be used in a tool chain. It is ideal for DITA
applications. It will also have some abilities to bring in some customized
content into the process, like executing external modules to convert
specialized content (think MathML or XML Graphs) to SVG or EPS using
external tools from within the DiType processing pipeline. It was designed
to be open on the front end (between FO and the formatter) as well as the
backend (after the formatter before the PDF/PostScript backend) for
customization.

You have very little to change in the process, we'll have a new plug-in
prepared ala the PDF2 plugin to call DiType in the same way XEP is called
today in the DITA pipeline. An ANT connector comes with the download as well
as Java and C# APIs (much like XEP today).

As for the "beans", the price is the same as the XEP product line. It will
be considered a major upgrade for XEP owners who wish to move to the new
product so those under support and maintenance have their upgrade policies
in their contract. Those who purchased within the warranty period (180 days)
will upgrade for free (Desktop or Server). Much like when we released XEP 4,
we also had a brief period of discounted upgrades for those who wish to move
to DiType from XEP for their publishing needs.

We'll be preparing all over the materials over the coming month for the
first customer ship planned around mid-April.


Kevin Brown
Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing
RenderX, Inc.
(650) 328-8000 Main
(650) 327-1000 Direct
(650) 328-8008 Fax
(925) 395-1772 Mobile
skype:kbrown01
kevin at renderx.com
sales at renderx.com




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xep-support at renderx.com [mailto:owner-xep-support at renderx.com]
On Behalf Of Steven Anderson
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 9:19 PM
To: xep-support at renderx.com
Subject: Re: [xep-support] DiType-based web services

Kevin, thanks for the very informative email.  I'm quite excited to  
hear that you have created a product for generating PDFs for technical  
documentation.  That's what I need.  Everything you wrote sounds great.

Let me cut to the chase, though.

We publish documentation created in DITA.  We use the DITA OT and  
Idiom's PDF2 plugin with RenderX XEP to create our PDFs.  What will I  
gain from using DiType? What will I have to change in my process?

Oh, and for the bean counters - what's the cross-grade cost?

       Steve

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