XMetaL 1.0
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SoftQuad Software Inc., makers of the popular HoTMetaL HTML editor, have recently released XMetaL 1.0, an application that is meant to facilitate the creation of documents based on SGML, XML and HTML.
In this review, I will attempt to have a look at how this program fullfills its goals. Since an XML editor is not strictly in HTML with Style's turf, I have included a short introduction to XML and some links to resources for those of you who don't know much about XML. This is the section following this one, and should gear everyone up sufficiently to make this review make sense to everyone. In other words, I'll give you enough information about XML so you can decide if I'm talking nonsense or not.
The last software review I did (of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0) had a lot of you claiming that I was talking nonsense, so this time I will dedicate a good chunk of this article to clarifying how I'm trying to judge this program. As you might have figured out by now, my idea of a software review is not to look over the press kit and list all of the wonderful new features in the software. I'm sure any of my readers is capable of doing that. What I'll be doing is thinking of what most users would expect this program to be capable of (I cannot cover everyone's taste, so those of you hoping that this program can make a double espresso ristretto well enough to warrant scrapping their coffee maker will be disappointed). And, for the first time, I will be judging software that costs money. Although you can all turn green from envy because I got my review copy for free, I have to keep in mind that XMetaL 1.0 costs $495 per single user license (SoftQuad is willing to arrange volume discounts and site licenses as well, please contact them for details). That's a lot of dosh to part with for a program that does things that can already be done with tools available for free. Is it good enough to justify the expense?
