Arbortext, Inc. announced the launch of Epic 4.0. Principal among Epic’s enhancements is the introduction Epic E-Content Engine (E3), a server-side system that enables e-businesses to attract and retain more customers by providing more personalized, dynamic and easily searchable content for improved pre-sale and post-sale interactions. In addition, Epic 4.0 adds compatibility with Oracle 8iFS to the list of repositories that Arbortext supports. E3 forms the centerpiece of a Web-based system to assemble, process and personalize business-critical content for delivery to the Web, print, wireless devices and other media. Running under a Web server, E3 offers powerful content processing capabilities that can be triggered through commands sent over the Web. Developers can write processing routines in a choice of several programming and scripting languages including C, C++, Java, TCL and Perl. Developers gain access to E3’s capabilities through its support for the Web-standard Document Object Model (DOM) Application Programming Interface (API). E3 can convert Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker and Interleaf content to XML through the Epic Interchange option. In addition, E3 can capture XML from Web forms with the Forms Engine option. E3 is capable of transforming XML for many different purposes, including HTML for Web browsers, WML for cellular phones, Open Electronic Book (OEB) for eBooks, PostScript and PDF. Through stylesheets based on XSL E3 adapts content to the capabilities and limitations of each device. For example, customers can control the size and font of text, the amount of text that fits in a single page, and the format of an automatically generated table of contents. Available as a new standard feature of Epic Architect, graphical DTD development for XML DTDs is the starting point for quick development of a DTD. This feature, along with Arbortext’s free form editing, enables rapid prototyping and helps reduce development time substantially compared to traditional DTD development. Epic 4.0 adds DOM Level 2 core support to existing DOM Level 1 support along with Range interface. Epic Editor, Epic Editor LE and E3 may be programmed using C, C++, Java, Perl, TCL and Arbortext Command Language (ACL). Epic Editor’s “Tag Alias” feature lets customer present alternate tag names to authors, which allows authors working in different language to create content based on the same DTD. With this release, all versions of Arbortext software support 16-bit Unicode. Epic 4.0 will ship in July 2000. All Arbortext customers on maintenance are eligible to receive the Epic 4.0 upgrade at no charge. www.arbortext.com