The speedata Publisher is different from what you know. The software is most comparable to XSL-FO, but pleasingly offers a lot more flexibility.
How about „server-side InDesign“? That's actually the paraphrase we like best.
The speedata Publisher is controlled by a fully fledged programming language based on standards such as XPath and HTML. You generate high-quality PDF files (print-ready or online) with it, fully automatically. The software is open source (GNU AGPL 3). You can find the source code on GitHub.
The speedata Publisher works with grid-based object placement to make optimal use of the available space. The layout is dynamically optimized. The software uses a strict XML Schema file (RELAX NG) in order to avoid syntax errors and to provide online help when editing the layout instructions.
Complex tables are typeable: multi-page tables with repeated header or footer, running sums, fixed or flexible columns and HTML features such as padding, margins and the like.
OpenType fonts, XML, Unicode and other up-to-date technologies are natively supported. The high-quality typesetting is based on TeX's optimum fit line break algorithm including margin kerning and font expansion.
Exact copyfitting is carried out depending on your needs. The speedata Publisher contains a built-in multi-pass solution for automatic tables of contents, index pages, etc. It supports most of the integrated languages (including correct hyphenation).
The software is extremely powerful: creating most documents takes less than half a second to produce up to 300 pages per second. QR codes, EAN-13 or Code 128 barcodes are easily generated. Small footprint: the complete installation requires only about 15 MB. The speedata Publisher runs successfully in many commercial projects and is actively developed further.
The speedata Publisher has no graphical user interface. It runs on the most common operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux) as command line tool: classic as an application that terminates itself after the creation of the PDF or as a background process for accepting requests via a REST API (»server mode«).
