And going on with Word as XSL-FO editor theme - take a look at a brand new tool called foActive <X>Styler:
foActive <X>Styler is a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 Professional which allows a user to design and test dynamic document templates right from within the Word authoring environment.And more:
<X>Styler is used to create XSL templates for server-based transformation for high-volume dynamic document print applications such as direct mail, correspondence, invoicing, statements, contracts, and legal forms.
Writing XSL templates that generate XSL FO output can be a difficult task, one suited for an engineer and not a marketing person. What the industry needed was an easy-to-use tool for designing templates to convert XML to XSL FO using XSL. There are applications that have recently emerged to do just this, however these are standalone applications designed from the ground-up for just this purpose. As such, they can be unnecessarily complex and require specific custom training to master. They expose all the functionality and complexities of XSL to the end-user.That's what I was talking about all the way.
And so foActive designed <X>Styler, merging the most common desktop application in use -- Microsoft Word -- with the difficult to master XSL design. We coupled the whole system to the industry's best XSL FO engine -- RenderX -- to deliver a complete solution for a wide variety of XSL design tasks.
The price is set at $199, beta program is open. Sounds really cool.
Nice to hear that people are looking for 'low-cost' XSLT/XSL FO designers, but what about the XSL FO engines that you need to render the document/form/reports ? Antenna House and RenderX remain expensive products (at 3.000$ to 5.000$ per processor). Are there any alternatives for these ? And by preference written for the .Net platform ?