Allowing the no-cost deployment of editing applications authored with their XSLT Designer, Altova appears to be positioning themselves as a cost-effective alternative to the XML abilities of the forthcoming Microsoft Office 11.

This announcement [download as PDF] is a continuation of the strategy of Altova to extend the original niche of XML Spy as an XML editor for XML developers to embrace the wider market of XML editing by end users -- recently qualified as "XML for the masses" by Microsoft and OpenOffice.

This strategy was first visible with the announcement of "XML Spy 4.0 XSLT Designer" (for development) and "XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor" (for deployment) in September 2001, two products packaged separately as "Stylevision" and "Authentic" with the announcement of XML Spy 5.0 in September 2002. This positioned Altova as a competitor of Epic ( Arbortext) and XMetal (Corel).

Derived from XML Spy, Authentic allows the editing of arbitrary XML documents as "Authentic views" based on XSLT transformations and developed with XSLT Designer (a component available in the packages Stylevision and XML Spy versions "Pro" and "Enterprise").

Authentic is available as a standalone editor, and shipping it free of charges in this form will keep it as a competitive means of editing XML documents -- Microsoft Office 11 will give the same possibility at no additional cost to Microsoft Word 11 users.

Authentic is also available as a plugin for Internet Explorer, and this version can be seen as an alternative to XForms, a W3C specification for editing XML documents on the web through input forms. Unlike XForms, Authentic is available only for Windows platforms.

Other stories:

• XML Spy 4.0 widens its target
• Microsoft Office embraces XML
• OpenOffice: the XML format for the masses
• Final Stretch for W3C XForms