DOCBOOK-APPS: ANNOUNCE: OpenJade 1.3.1

[Ian Castle <ian.castle@looksystems.co.uk>]

OpenJade 1.3.1 is now available to download at

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/openjade

OpenJade 1.3.1 is very much a maintenance release. It is fully described
in the release notes which are available from the location above (and
included in the release).

OpenJade 1.3.1 pulls together the various patches and fixes that have
been made and tested since the previous release of OpenJade, back in
1999. In addition, the new release supports new platforms and the latest
GNU and Microsoft compilers "out of the box".

Release highlights include:

- Support for new platforms and architectures including Mac OS X /
Darwin and Cygwin, Intel ia64 under Linux (and S/390, PPC, Sparc, Alpha
etc).
- Support for GCC 2.95.3, Red Hat GCC 2.96, GCC 3.0 and hopefully GCC
3.1 when it becomes available.
- Support for Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0
- Upgraded GNU source configuration tools (autoconf, configure script)
to make openjade more portable (and to reach more environments).

- Improvements to the TeX backend included enhanced table support and
working double sided output support (required jadetex 3.4 or later)

- UNIX on-line manual (man) pages for the various tools in the package

There are sundry other bug fixes which are fully described in the
release notes. Hopefully, the release notes will also answer the
question "what is the difference between Jade and OpenJade?" which has
been asked more than once on this list..

The release notes (releasenotes.xml) are marked up using DocBook and
releasenotes.dsl is a driver for the Modular DocBook style sheets. There
is also a Makefile included which shows how to run openjade to create
the document.

The document demonstrates the improved features of the openjade TeX
backend (tables, double sided output) and the stylesheet attempts to
provide an example of title page customization, correct numbering of a
preface and a few other frequently asked about issues on this list.

The supplied releasenotes.pdf has been created with openjade 1.3.1 and
jadetex 3.12 together with the DSSSL stylesheets 1.74b. [Caveat: There
is a patch to the stylesheets needed which is available from sourceforge
to remove the spurious extra page between the front/rear title pages
when producing double sided output. Hopefully, this patch will be
applied to the stylesheets soon].

I hope to put up a Windows binary build before too long.. But it is just
the source at the moment.

Enjoy!


Ian.

 - XSLT may be sexy, but DSSSL is beautiful* -

*Before flaming, remember that beauty is in the high of the beholder;-).