Version 5.4 released

Version 5.4 of the speedata Publisher is now available. This is a solid update with speed improvements, better HTML support, and a few nice additions. Here is what changed since 5.2.

Speed

This version is noticeably faster. Several internal optimizations — grid allocation, paragraph post-processing, and general typesetting — add up to a real difference, especially for larger documents. There is also a new option html="off" on text elements to skip the HTML parser when you do not need it, which speeds things up further.

Letterspacing

You can now set letter spacing in <Textformat>. This has been requested a few times, especially for headings and display text.

Section element

A new <Section> element lets you group parts of your layout file. It does not affect the output — it is purely for organization. The new vscode-speedata extension uses it for code folding and outline navigation. More about this in the previous blog post.

HTML and CSS

Many improvements in this area:

• Better table handling (borders, splitting, empty tables)
• More list style types
• Font family normalization
• CSS font size setting via cssfontsize
• Various border and color fixes

Bug fixes

• Fix margin protrusion values
• Fix infinite loops in HTML tables and paragraph post-processing
• Fix ForAll context loss with the new XPath parser
• Fix absolute positioning height calculation
• Fix Until with new XPath mode
• Set correct exit code when errors occur

VSCode extension

The new vscode-speedata extension replaces the older RedHat XML setup. It brings proper syntax support, validation, autocomplete, and the Section-based code folding mentioned above.

As always, downloads are at download.speedata.de. The detailed changelog is in the manual.