The XML Apache Project has released version 2.6 of Xerces-J, the popular open source XML parser for Java. This expands the experimental support for DOM Level 3 and moves SAX up to 2.0.1. In addition, some bugs were fixed, including the correct setting of base URIs for documents read from a redirected HTTP request. It also enables XML 1.1 by default, a very bad decision. Currently I can count the number of people in the world who need XML 1.1 on the fingers of one hand. Hell, that's too generous. I can count them on one thumb. There's no excuse for making this the default option. I can't say I'm surprised by this, though. IBM is the primary author of Xerces, and the prime mover behind XML 1.1. Despite all the nice talk about supporting minority languages, the real motive for XML 1.1 is to support the non-standard, non-interoperable line breaking conventions used on some IBM mainframes. I'm working on figuring out how to disable the XML 1.1 support. Once that's done, I'll probably make this the default parser for XOM, since other than the XML 1.1 issues, Xerces is a very nice parser.
Intesis has released eSVG 2.0, an implementation of the subsets of SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile specifications designed for integration into embedded systems. eSVG provides multithreaded eSVG scripting according to the SVG DOM 2 interface specification. eSVG scripting is based on SpiderMonkey (JavaScript-C) Engine and ORMIDE. eSVG supports most SVG Tiny profile features, SVG Basic profile features, SVG DOM interface entries, and SMIL animation. New features in 2.0 include:
eSVG runs on Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP, Windows CE, and UniOP MMI. eSVG costs €380 for 3 developer/50 runtime licenses.
EvolGrafiX has released XStudio 2.0, a €579;payware eSVG based WYSIWYG SVG authoring tool.
Syntext has released Serna 1.0.1, a $299 payware XSL-based WYSIWYG XML Document Editor for Windows and Linux. Features include on-the-fly XSL-driven XML rendering and transformation, on-the-fly XML Schema validation, and spell checking. Pricing is reduced to $149 until the end of the year. If you actually want support, it will cost you $99 extra. Personally, I'm not willing to pay for any product that doesn't include support.