Signs on the Sand

RenderX has announced the first release (somehow it's v3.0 :) of XEP.NET - XSL-FO formatter for .NET.

XEP.NET is a Visual J#.NET port of RenderX XEP, an XSL formatter for Java; its functionality and XSL FO support level are identical to the Java version. The XEP.NET core is wrapped in an API that exposes standard .NET interfaces for XML processing. This public API forms a .NET class library component that can be used from any .NET programming language: C#, VB.NET, or J#.NET. Additionally, the software includes a class library for MSXML integration that allows use of MSXML SAX parser and transformation APIs in addition to .NET system interfaces.

Prices from $299.95 (client edition) to $4999.95(server edition), free trial (11 pages only), free academic edition. Now this is really interesting:

All editions include XEP.NET Assistant - a graphical shell to make formatting more convenient, and command-line tools for launching the formatter and the validator.

Lack of visual XSL-FO designers is one of main XSL-FO weaknesses. I'm glad to see such XSL-FO legend as RenderX is trying to fix it.