Tim Waugh has released xmlto, a utility designed to act as a single XSL tool-chain "front end" for converting XML source documents into HTML, PDF, and other formats. [download site]

Waugh plans to make xmlto usable with several different XSLT engines and source document types, though the only XSLT engine it understands how to use now is Daniel Veillard's xsltproc, and DocBook XML and direct XSL-FO source are currently the only document types for which it provides off-the-shelf transformation support. In its present form, it can (by making use of the DocBook XSL stylesheets):

• transform DocBook XML source documents to HTML, PDF, man pages, plain text, PostScript, DVI, and XSL-FO files


• transform XSL-FO files to PDF, PostScript, and DVI

Note: For PDF, PostScript, and DVI output, xmlto relies on Sebastian Rahtz's PassiveTeX FO engine.

An online man page provides more details.