downCast 1.7.2 review
DownloaddownCast converts XML documents valid according to the upCast DTD (and, in fact, any XML document whose DTD can be mapped into the up
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downCast converts XML documents valid according to the upCast DTD (and, in fact, any XML document whose DTD can be mapped into the upCast DTD) linked with an external stylesheet to Word and Rich Text Format (RTF) for editing and printing.
Combine it with upCast, and you have a combo that offers a unique, streamlined, roundtrip-capable and integrated XML editing and publishing solution based - among others - on the open standards XML, XLink, XSLT and CSS2.
The conversion process downCast implements tries to use the structuring RTF constructs wherever possible like native tables, character and paragraph styles derived automatically from the stylesheet, native lists, headers, footers, textboxes, footnotes or annotations.
This makes the result very different from a PDF document that places objects at specific positions on a canvas and is not editable by the end user. Instead, downCast makes the resulting document highly accessible for editing without breaking the general layout.
Inserting a list item in a numbered list with automatic renumbering or adding a column in a table is something which cannot easily (if at all) be done in output formats like PDF or XSL-FO by a regular user.
downCast project also supports more advanced features like rendering of OASIS Exchange Table Model tables or fields whose actual contents gets automatically calculated by Word.
Additionally, downCast does not rely on the availability of Word template files for styles or font definitions, which makes it suitable for Word document generation on server platforms other than Windows.
Two-byte encoding and Unicode support is built-in. Encodings for special fonts can be specified in a font property mapping table, as well as you can modify the default stylesheet used for the conversion.
downCast has a built-in slim, but efficient application programming interface (API). You can program against this API and thus include the complete functionality of our downCast Technology into your own applications.
By writing only a few lines of Java code, you gain complete control over the document conversion process the same way as you would using the GUI.
Limitations:
30-day evaluation DEMO
The document text output will contain interspersed random characters.
The evaluation version only converts one document at a time then quits.
Requirements:
Java 1.4.2 or later
downCast 1.7.2 keywords