Arbortext

Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher (APP, formerly Advent 3B2) is a commercial typesetting software application sold by Parametric Technology Corporation.

The software contains an automated publishing engine that can manually or automatically produce Postscript and PDF documents with complex page layouts. Entry level pricing through specialized resellers starts between $4,000 and $10,000 USD.

APP has traditionally been used for a number of specific typesetting tasks.

APP supports processing of marked-up text such as SGML, XML and HTML natively, using a JavaScript based Formatting Object Model API and/or its own proprietary scripting languages and established technologies such as Perl, XPath and Unicode. Its rules-based engine allows the stylesheet builder to automate demanding page make-up tasks and run them in a 'lights out' server mode.

APP applies text and page formatting properties with any chevron delimited mark-up such as SGML or XML or non well formed markup. APP 'templates' are stylesheets which comprise page layouts, text formatting styles and scripting.

Scripting is used to automate and apply conditions to the publishing process. Traditionally this was done using 'macros', which are low-level system commands. In later versions a JavaScript FOM API was introduced which can be used as automation scripting and powerful inline conditional processing. When using XML, a template can employ XPath or match-statement contexts to specify the exact conditions to which style is applied though the parser. Such conditions can also be configured for SGML and other tagged data using proprietary tools called showstrings.

Principal outputs are PostScript and PDF, although APP also provides a number of alternative output drivers. APP provides a WYSIWYG view of pages in the Desktop version, which can be used to manipulate pages after automated composition, or to build templates.

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