Altova has announced the general availability of the XML Spy 4.0 Suite, including an updated version of their IDE and new tools targeted to users who may not necessarily be XML geeks.

The XML Spy 4.0 IDE is an update of XML Spy 3.5 and includes full validation and graphical design support for the W3C XML Schema  Recommendation. The update is free of charge for customers who bought XML Spy 3.5 after January 19th, 2001.

Like its predecessor, the IDE is an XML editor supporting tree, text and graphical (W3C XML Schema only) modes. It's easy to use for technical users who will appreciate the dual functionality of the tree and text modes, and it provides help and guidance that makes it almost impossible to create non-well-formed or  invalid documents. The IDE exposes angle brackets and requires a minimum level of XML knowledge.

Altova has complemented the IDE with a couple more mainstream products that make up the XML Spy 4.0 Suite:

• XML Spy 4.0 XSLT Designer, a drag and drop DTD and W3C XML Schema-aware workshop, is an attempt provide users who do not know XSLT with a way to automate the writing of XSLT stylesheets for producing (X)HTML output.
• XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor uses the output of the XSLT Designer to provide a "word-processor-style free-flow WYSISYG text editor for XML documents, empowering non-technical people to create and edit XML documents".

Other stories:

• New XML editor
• XML Spy 4 enters second beta phase
• Free Windows XML development environment
• Whitehill XSL Composer released