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Long overdue update to the UBL to UN Layout Key free rendering environme

• From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>
• To: XML-Dev Mailing list <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:19:16 -0500

The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) 2.0 XML vocabulary is 
used to express the content of 31 different business document types, 
such as invoices, orders, waybills, etc.

   http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0/UBL-2.0.html
   http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.0-update.html

After over two years of neglect, I've finally released the latest 
revision of Crane's free environment for rendering UBL invoices to 
both HTML and PDF according to the United Nations Layout Key (UNLK):

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ublss/#ubl2-ss

Those who have downloaded and implemented these stylesheets and 
runtime in their web sites and products will likely want to get the 
latest as there are now command-line options for formatting 
choices.  The actual box layouts have not changed, but these features 
may be of interest to users.

One interesting feature of the PDF renderings is that I reconstitute 
the input UBL XML document and embed it into the PDF in the XMP 
metadata in clear text (when the included Ibex commercial XSL-FO 
engine is used).

The stylesheet package includes a copy of Crane's free standalone 
Python and XSLT package used to extract XMP metadata out of an 
uncompressed and unencrypted PDF file and the UBL document encoded 
therein in clear text:

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/#XMP

The implication is that by creating a PDF rendering of a UBL document 
in this manner, and sending or archiving the one PDF file, the input 
UBL instance can be distilled from that file using an open, auditable 
and free process.

Please contact us if you have a need for a UBL document rendering 
environment according to your own corporate layout and 
appearance.  Please include images of sample bogus documents 
illustrating your layout requirement for us to use in our estimate.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

cc: UBL TC, UBL-Dev, XML-Dev, Mulberry XSL List

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