XMLComposer (from Metaformix)

XMLComposer is used for passing XML documents from watched folders for automated, batch-oriented processing through TopLeaf. It provides a convenient call interface to TopLeaf, and offers a simple way to control the generation of high-accuracy typeset XML for professional publications. It is well suited to publication environments where documents are large or complex. XMLComposer can be run entirely in batch mode. Configuration options allow you to specify which source directories the program will inspect. Files with extensions of .sgm, .sgml, .htm, .html and .xml are processed.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
XMLComposer is very easy to use when integrating with document management systems. The document management system simply has to write XML files to a specified input directory for XMLComposer.

FLEXIBLE CONFIGURATION
TopLeaf requires a set of control files for the XML files it typesets. XMLComposer provides the location of these control files to TopLeaf's partition for a document being processed, based on entries in XMLComposer's configuration file. Alternatively,the control files can be placed in a monitored input directory. This allows you to configure different document typesetting styles according to monitored input directories. By using control files in monitored input directories, you can easily separate different style requirements for different documents.

SUPPORT FOR WORD AND EXCEL
XMLComposer can be used to automate the batch-processing of Microsoft Word 2000 and Excel 2000 files (save and/or print). XMLComposer comes with two conversion utilities for this purpose. (Word and Excel must be installed on the same machine as XMLComposer.) Alternatively, you can substitute your own utilities to perform this task. You simply define the utilities to use in XMLComposer's configuration file.

SYNCHRONISED INTEGRATION WITH DISTILLER
While you can send PostScript output to Distiller through Distiller's watched folders, you can also synchronise Distiller with XMLComposer. During processing through TopLeaf, XMLComposer instructs TopLeaf to print the typeset documents to a system printer. When printing is complete, XMLComposer then starts Distiller invisibly, and instructs Distiller to process the PostScript file which was created by TopLeaf.

DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT
Because XMLComposer integrates by watching folders, you can distribute processing to many servers. For example, a document management server might place files on a file server directory watched by XMLComposer. The XMLComposer server would host TopLeaf and perhaps Word and Excel applications. The output from XMLComposer could then go to a directory watched by Acrobat Distiller, which could in turn make PDFs which were uploaded back into the document manager, or which were placed directly on a web server.