Free UBL formatter now available

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello UBL users and developers,

You'll remember last month's announcement of free XSL-FO UBL
stylesheets from Crane Softwrights:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-dev/200410/msg00004.html

The availability of the Crane stylesheets means that any UBL
instance document (purchase order, invoice, etc.) can be rendered
by an XSL-FO formatter as a PDF or HTML file conforming to the UN
Layout Key, which has served for over 40 years as the
international standard for printed trade documents.

In a stunning followup to the Crane release, Ambrosoft has
announced this week the availability of a free Java formatter that
implements the Crane UBL stylesheets as a single executable jar
file.  The Ambrosoft UBL transformer runs on any Java platform
(including Personal Java, available on some PDAs) and will
transform any UBL 1.0 document instance into either an FO file for
further processing by an FO-aware application or directly into
HTML that can be displayed or printed out using an ordinary web
browser.

The UBL transformer can be downloaded from the Ambrosoft site at

   http://www.ambrosoft.com/

According to the documentation included in the release, the UBL
transformer "is an illustration of how standard XSLT stylesheets
are converted into a fast and small Java executable JAR file,
suitable for high-speed or small-footprint applications from
servers to hand-held devices.  This JAR file was created with
Ambrosoft's Gregor/XSLT technology, implementing high performance
XSLT processing with an optimizing compiler and a fine-tuned
runtime system.  A descendant of XSLTC, Gregor/XSLT reflects a few
more years of innovation and experimentation in speeding up XSLT
processing and today is the fastest XSLT solution for Java."

Thanks to Crane and Ambrosoft, UBL can now claim to have fulfilled
its promise to provide a standard machine-processable business
data format from which at any moment you can automatically
generate an internationally standardized paper or online
representation usable in traditional paper and fax-based
workflows.  G. Ken Holman of Crane and Jacek Ambroziak of
Ambrosoft deserve the congratulations and appreciation of the
entire world business community for their critical contribution to
making the vision of low-cost electronic commerce a reality.

Jon Bosak, Sun Microsystems
Chair, OASIS UBL Technical Committee